I have spent the better part of today going through stacks of papers, trying to decide what should be kept, what can be recycled, and what needs to be shredded. I think that shredding as an activity ranks right up there with monthly faculty meetings and cleaning the bathroom. Mind-numbing and faintly disgusting. But, until modern life becomes the truly paperless utopia it secretly deludes itself that it already is, sorting, storing and shredding are just one of several downsides to be an adult. Not a grown-up, mind you, but an adult. Adult is a term that recognizes the number of years spent living and breathing (and for some of us those years were spent breathing more than living) but to be grown-up means to have come to terms with the downs as well as the ups of attaining the age of legality. And, I think, acting accordingly.
Having exhausted the shredder, which now sits idly as I wait for it to cool down, I am left to ponder how the room consuming piles I had this morning have, being lessened, managed to take on an even more unkempt appearance. A lesson to be learned about organization is that it is always more chaotic before order is restored. In my case, this isn’t quite true. My ideas about order could unhinge even the most bohemian soul, but it (mostly) works for me.
My Facebook profile of late has stated that “Ann is currently attempting to force organization on her life.” This is only partly true. There is order, of sorts and even routine. It just still seems that some days I am not making headway though where I think I am going is a mystery. I am where I want to be, but, and this should be unsurprising, I am still the same haphazard person I was before baby and dying husband supposedly infected me with disorganization. Who knew? Well, I did. I like to imagine that I cleaned more often and had all my important papers sorted, labeled and safely stored. I really didn’t clean but once a week and since it was just me, it was pretty easy, and I have always filed horizontally. Even at school. I remember one time when I was teaching eighth grade Language Arts, a student came in at the beginning of class and remarked upon how wonderful it was to be able to see the top of my desk. And she was one of my nice students. I am order challenged, then and now. Still I somehow retain the fantasy of clean and put away.
Shredding is like cleaning toilets though and on a scale of one to ten, it is a two when it comes to increasing efficiency and aiding the quest for order. It’s dusty, dull and intermediary because even when you have finished shredding, you still have shreds with which to deal. It is a task that forces you to actually read and assess the worth of the items Many of the papers concerned medical issues of my late husband’s and paperwork that was generated by his stay in the nursing home and then hospice. Lots of application copies and consent forms. Nothing heart rendering but there comes a time when you wonder where the end of the paper trail is. Though some people refer to the process of downsizing official files about their loved ones’ illnesses and/or deaths as “shredding their lives” for me, my life is and was more than a stack of wood pulp. Rendering them confetti doesn’t signify literally or even metaphorically a loss of my past. Memories are not that easily gotten rid off. I suppose for some their is a finality to getting rid of old papers (or clothing or anything tangible really) but most stuff is just stuff. In my personal frame of reference there are only a few items that hold meaning to deep to allow them be destroyed or cast away.
Still, even minus drama the kind of burrowing in today’s efforts entailed is taxing. In the end though, it is better to divest oneself of the literal baggage of the past, good and bad, on a more regular basis then we do. It is an exercise in growth as well as space saving.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Bikinis and Me
I recently began deep water workouts again. I abandoned weight training in favor of a similar program about 8 or so years ago, and it proved to be a very effective program. Toning, strengthening and best of all it was in the water, my adopted second home at the time. Fast forward to now. I happily discovered that the local pool offered a deep water class twice a week for an hour. The upside is that it is as good a workout as I remember, and the downside is that it is from eight to nine in the evening. It’s not even five, and I am ready for a nap.
My current swim attire turned out to be unsuitable for water workouts, as I feared it would. Tankinis have a tendency to “fly up” in the water when you are aqua-sizing. Back in the day, I wore a two piece. I owned quite the assortment of bikinis, and I made good use of them. During the summer, I swam nearly everyday, and a bikini top was pretty standard for me under my t-shirt and sometimes without the tee at all if it was warm enough. When I mentioned to Rob that I owned several of these suits, he asked if I had been an exhibitionist. I never thought of myself that way then though I suppose, looking back, I was. Growing up I had been quite uncomfortable with skimpy because, as I have mentioned before, I was pretty hefty. When I reached thirty though, years of religious work out, including an avid love of running, had put me in the physical shape necessary, in my opinion, to carry off a two piece. However, pregnancy and years of care-taking pretty much wiped up my gains, both physically and confidence-wise. Though I am in actuality thinner than I was a decade or more ago, I am not nearly in as good a shape, but I needed a two piece to be able to work out sans annoying suit.
So yesterday, I trekked across Edmonton (by myself thank you very much) to the West Edmonton Mall. It’s fall here in Canada and the swim-wear is gone from the department stores, but there are plenty of specialty shops at West Ed because Canadians, as I have oft-mentioned, take their holidaying seriously. The Surfco shop was nothing but suits and the vast majority were really tiny bikinis. Sure they had one piece suits that would have worked, but I just can’t work out in them. They are too short=bodied for me. So, with the help of a very pretty and annoyingly thin shop girl, I picked out three suits that I hoped wouldn’t shatter all the confidence I had built up just for this occasion and into the dressing room I went.
The first suit was actually too big. It feels great to try something on and find that it is too big for you. That doesn’t happen often. Usually things fit but are too short or not the right design for my frame, but too big is always a treat. The next suit, I have to admit, I looked pretty darn good in for someone my age. I read recently that the actress Demi Moore has spent about a half million dollars on “upkeep's and upgrades” for her body. She is a year older than I am, and looks better than both her teenage daughters, but she has the too-taunt facial expression that screams “botox” and a stomach too flat for a mother of three that plainly pronounces her a cheater because once you’ve given birth there is a certain curvature to the solar plexus that you will never be rid of regardless of how stringent your diet or vigorous your workout routine. Looking at myself in that light blue sting bikini, yes....it was a string bikini, I felt sorry for her. I looked great. No muffining over the stings. The bum cheeks didn’t have that stuff sausage look of trying to put too much flesh into to small of an area. Yeah, my stomach could be more flat and my thighs a shade thinner, but I am nearly forty-four. I’ve had a child and know the stress of long term care-taking. My arms and legs have seen a bit of sun, though no deliberate sun worshipping. I am not young and firm and impossibly thin though I am smaller than the average size American (and Canadian for that matter) woman.
However, I didn’t get the string bikini. Maybe if Rob had been shopping with me, I could have been (easily) persuaded, but my old prejudices and standards wouldn’t allow the purchase. Looking good for my age, doesn’t quite cut it with me even now. Last year I would watch the girls in the high school where I taught with a feeling that couldn’t decide if it was admiration or horror. They would strut proudly up and down the halls wearing clothes that were clearly designed with small and taunt in mind, not pudgy, paunchy and even quite overweight. When I was in high school, well.....I wore a uniform it was Catholic school, but girls of a certain size were barred from wearing “thin girl” outfits. And this was not just a social admonishment, it was by design. There wasn’t yet the financial incentive needed by clothes makers to cater and pander with lycra and spandex enticements.
Suit number three turned out to be the winner. And not by default. There is something about practical, functional and sexy rolled into one that takes a clothing purchase to the next level past shopping nirvana. It’s halter style made it good for actual use in the water, and it fit even better than the string one, although there is something about a string bikini that just says sexy in a way that no other suit truly does. For my part I am pleased to be back into a two piece. Believe it or not it is part of the reclaiming of myself process that has been going on for a long while. I modeled it for Rob later that evening and he pronounced it hot looking. Of course there is some bias there.
My current swim attire turned out to be unsuitable for water workouts, as I feared it would. Tankinis have a tendency to “fly up” in the water when you are aqua-sizing. Back in the day, I wore a two piece. I owned quite the assortment of bikinis, and I made good use of them. During the summer, I swam nearly everyday, and a bikini top was pretty standard for me under my t-shirt and sometimes without the tee at all if it was warm enough. When I mentioned to Rob that I owned several of these suits, he asked if I had been an exhibitionist. I never thought of myself that way then though I suppose, looking back, I was. Growing up I had been quite uncomfortable with skimpy because, as I have mentioned before, I was pretty hefty. When I reached thirty though, years of religious work out, including an avid love of running, had put me in the physical shape necessary, in my opinion, to carry off a two piece. However, pregnancy and years of care-taking pretty much wiped up my gains, both physically and confidence-wise. Though I am in actuality thinner than I was a decade or more ago, I am not nearly in as good a shape, but I needed a two piece to be able to work out sans annoying suit.
So yesterday, I trekked across Edmonton (by myself thank you very much) to the West Edmonton Mall. It’s fall here in Canada and the swim-wear is gone from the department stores, but there are plenty of specialty shops at West Ed because Canadians, as I have oft-mentioned, take their holidaying seriously. The Surfco shop was nothing but suits and the vast majority were really tiny bikinis. Sure they had one piece suits that would have worked, but I just can’t work out in them. They are too short=bodied for me. So, with the help of a very pretty and annoyingly thin shop girl, I picked out three suits that I hoped wouldn’t shatter all the confidence I had built up just for this occasion and into the dressing room I went.
The first suit was actually too big. It feels great to try something on and find that it is too big for you. That doesn’t happen often. Usually things fit but are too short or not the right design for my frame, but too big is always a treat. The next suit, I have to admit, I looked pretty darn good in for someone my age. I read recently that the actress Demi Moore has spent about a half million dollars on “upkeep's and upgrades” for her body. She is a year older than I am, and looks better than both her teenage daughters, but she has the too-taunt facial expression that screams “botox” and a stomach too flat for a mother of three that plainly pronounces her a cheater because once you’ve given birth there is a certain curvature to the solar plexus that you will never be rid of regardless of how stringent your diet or vigorous your workout routine. Looking at myself in that light blue sting bikini, yes....it was a string bikini, I felt sorry for her. I looked great. No muffining over the stings. The bum cheeks didn’t have that stuff sausage look of trying to put too much flesh into to small of an area. Yeah, my stomach could be more flat and my thighs a shade thinner, but I am nearly forty-four. I’ve had a child and know the stress of long term care-taking. My arms and legs have seen a bit of sun, though no deliberate sun worshipping. I am not young and firm and impossibly thin though I am smaller than the average size American (and Canadian for that matter) woman.
However, I didn’t get the string bikini. Maybe if Rob had been shopping with me, I could have been (easily) persuaded, but my old prejudices and standards wouldn’t allow the purchase. Looking good for my age, doesn’t quite cut it with me even now. Last year I would watch the girls in the high school where I taught with a feeling that couldn’t decide if it was admiration or horror. They would strut proudly up and down the halls wearing clothes that were clearly designed with small and taunt in mind, not pudgy, paunchy and even quite overweight. When I was in high school, well.....I wore a uniform it was Catholic school, but girls of a certain size were barred from wearing “thin girl” outfits. And this was not just a social admonishment, it was by design. There wasn’t yet the financial incentive needed by clothes makers to cater and pander with lycra and spandex enticements.
Suit number three turned out to be the winner. And not by default. There is something about practical, functional and sexy rolled into one that takes a clothing purchase to the next level past shopping nirvana. It’s halter style made it good for actual use in the water, and it fit even better than the string one, although there is something about a string bikini that just says sexy in a way that no other suit truly does. For my part I am pleased to be back into a two piece. Believe it or not it is part of the reclaiming of myself process that has been going on for a long while. I modeled it for Rob later that evening and he pronounced it hot looking. Of course there is some bias there.
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