Christmas shopping = bah humbug

I’m slogging through the mall, dragging a shopping bag on the ground, and wondering when I turned into a one-hundred-year-old fuddy-duddy. I haven’t been to the mall in months, and I’m surprised to see that the mall has changed, and not for the better.

In my absence, my mall has been transformed into a theme park shopping palace, designed to delight any thirteen to twenty-two-year-old. And I’m clearly not one of them. The delighted ones. Stores I used to know and love I no longer recognize. Victoria’s Secret was once a store I could stroll into and buy an ordinary bra. No longer. Since my last trip to VS, the store has been enlarged into a superstore filled with scraps of lace formerly known as women’s undergarments. A stripper’s paradise. The Home Depot of lingerie. As I wander deeper and deeper into the stripper’s lair, a clearly bored, eighteen-year-old  clerk whips by saying, “Hi, how are you?” without even making eye contact, clearly not wanting to wait on someone as ancient as… her own mother.

Leaving that nightmare behind, I head to J.C. Penney, a store that formerly had clothes for people like me. But J.C. Penney has been transformed into JCP, a stylized combination of The Gap and Banana Republic, or in other words, any store that appeals to the thirteen to twenty-two-year-old demographic. But hope springs eternal, so I head to the men’s  jeans department, hoping to find jeans for Best Husband for Christmas. But this is not my momma’s jeans department, nor is it my husband’s either. The wall shelves of cubbies of sensible jeans has been replaced by an array of counters with every imaginable version of jeans spread out upon them, all of them with mysterious names, and most labeled “sits below waist.” A veritable cornucopia of jeans for skinny twenty-year-old guys. So  where were the jeans for ordinary men? What I wanted was something between the mom jeans that Obama wore in his first term, and the pre-worn-out, acid-washed, pre-wrinkled skinny low waists that populated the jeans counters. And what’s with the bar stools and counters anyway? “I’ll have a venti mom jean with a side of acid-washed boot cut please.”

I leave the jeans department shaken, but not stirred, and stop at the makeup counter on my way out. I just need a simple mascara, and maybe some eye

shadow. I’m pretty sure they can’t have changed makeup enough that it no longer fits middle-aged women. But a rabid Christmas shopper with a fistful of coupons wriggles into my place in line. Turns out she wants to pay for a sweater, and circumvent the line in the clothing department. She makes the makeup counter clerk try each coupon until she finds the one with the best discount. By the time this transaction is completed, the makeup clerk and I have both clearly run out of patience.

Now, it’s back into the mall and back to my Sisyphean task of dragging my bag along the shiny tile floor. Word to the wise: if you’re short, don’t ever buy anything at a mall that requires a big bag, or you too will be forced to endure my fate, of dragging a bag along the floor while wondering when you became an anachronism.

© Huffygirl 2012

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• Avoiding the Bah Humbugs: Shop Local (mutterschwester.wordpress.com)

In a haze

The “Scenes of Hazing”, as portrayed in an early student yearbook of the Massachusetts Agricultural College. Circa 1879. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m listening to yet another call in show on hazing and once again am disgusted and mystified. In an advanced society such as ours, I find it unconscionable that hazing still exists, and in fact, that is has ever existed. How does hazing even make sense? A young student wants to make friends and join a particular group. Current group members taunt, harass, embarrass, injure, torture and sometimes kill the new member. At the end of a certain period of time, they stop this process and say “now you can be our friend.” I fail to see a) why anyone would want to be friends with these kind of people,and how they could possibly have a valid friendship after the way they were treated, and b) how this barbaric system persists, especially in academia, where, students (and parents) pay  large sums  of money to attend, and in the military, where service persons in life and death situations should be working as teammates. Hazers are small-minded insecure people, who only feel good when they are making other people feel bad. Why anyone would want to join others of this mindset is beyond my comprehension.

How can we stop hazing? Apparently no one really knows, as this practice persists, despite universities’  so-called attempts to end it, and despite deaths, serious injuries and expensive lawsuits.

I don’t pretend to know the answer to this perplexing problem. My best suggestion is to punish institutions that allow hazing by withholding money.  Alumni and university donors should withhold donations from institutions with known hazing occurring, and make known to administrators why they are declining to donate. If serious injury, lawsuits and death will not stop hazing, maybe money will.

© Huffygirl 2012

Related articles:

• The Diane Rehm Show: The dangers of hazing and what’s being done about it
• Bounty for all (huffygirl.wordpress.com)
• FAMU says it’s not responsible for hazing death (miamiherald.com)
• Wilfrid Laurier suspends baseball team over hazing (thestar.com)

To Labor Day: An ode

Reblogged from Huffygirl's Blog:

• 

Oh labor, oh labor, how valiant you are.

To those hard at work, your day is a star!

You help us birth babies, you build fine tall bridges;

You help us cure scabies, you bulldoze big ridges.

You wipe runny noses, you help us build houses;

You polish our toeses, you catch naughty mouses.

You work day and night, keeping our country safe.

Read more… 158 more words

Unfortunately, one year later, this Labor Day ode still rings true in the US today. Sigh.

Christopher McDougall and me: Born to run, or not?

Weeks after my reintroduction to running my first 5K in 30 some years, I’m getting ready to go out for a little run again. First  I tape up my recalcitrantly inflamed ankle. Next, Ace wrap my torn, aching hamstring. Then the usual stuff:  shorts, shirt, heart rate monitor, cell phone, and I’m ready to go. Turns out that running has only gotten harder, not easier, as my physical therapist and sports medicine doc can attest. So why do I still do it? I admit that most days I’m mystified myself.

If we are, as Christopher McDougall posits, born to run, why is it so hard, or nearly impossible, for most of us? I’m two years late to the party, reading McDougall’s 2010 tome, Born to Run, long after everyone else has already tried and given up on barefoot running and buying Chia pets to make their own chia seed elixir. Yet, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon, convinced that somewhere in this book is the answer to how a middle-aged women with a non-athletic body can somehow be transformed into a modicum of runner. My goal to run two miles twice a week, and a few 5k’s a summer, so far has been mostly insurmountable, and getting farther away each day, as every run I take I swear will be my last.

So I’m trying it again.  Like McDougall, I’ve been to my family doctor, who gently suggested that walking might be a better option, ahem, at my age. I’ve been to the sports medicine doc who told me that as long as I’m unable to hop on my bad ankle, I’ll have no success running on it. My bike guru who had gently discouraged me, now says “I’m surprised you’ve lasted THIS long.” The only bright spot is at  physical therapy, where, I’ve  actually garnered some understanding of my aspirations, and surprisingly, some improvement, including now being able to hop on each foot.

I could try gait analysis, but I’m afraid I’ll end up being the five-foot two version of McDougall’s running monster, as McDougall recounts here, which had me chortling uncontrollably when I first read it:

“Dr. Davis put me on the treadmill…and had me walk, trot and haul ass.. Then I sat in horror as she played back the video. …The guy on the screen was Frankenstein’s monster trying to tango.. I was bobbing around so much, my head was disappearing from the top of the frame. My arms were slashing back and forth like an ump calling  a player safe at the plate, while my size 13s clumped down so heavily it sounded like the video had a bongo back beat…my right foot twisted out, my left knee dipped in, and my back bucked and spasmed so badly that it looked as if someone ought to jam a wallet between my teeth and call for help. How was I even moving forward with all that up-down, side-to-side, fish-on a hook flopping going on?”

McDougall’s quest to run without injury brought him to explore the ways of the Tarahumara, a  tribe of super runners, and the Leadville Trail 100 ultra-marathoners, all of whom run amazing distances year after year, without harm. If those folks can run like that, shouldn’t McDougall and I be able to run our paltry little distances injury free? Unless McDougall’s writings are sheer hyperbole, perhaps I’ll find the answer by the time I finish the book.

Have you read McDougall’s book? What physical achievements have you accomplished, despite the odds tilted against your success?

© Huffygirl 2012

Related articles

• Run Diary, part I (huffygirl.wordpress.com)
• Run Diary, part II (huffygirl.wordpress.com)
• Things I have learned from running (losingit.wordpress.com)
• Born to Run: a Book to Love (uncoolrunning.com)

Title IX turns 40

I grew up before there was Title IX, graduating from high school the year before Title IX became law. What was it like back then (okay, way, way back then) for girls and women in average small town America? Where I lived, there were no high school sports for girls. If you wanted to “play” a sport, you could be a cheerleader. Except, you had to be cute, little, peppy and popular. That left out me, and most everyone else.

What to wear? There was very little sports apparel made for women. No sport’s bras  – not invented until 1975, and not perfected until much later. No athletic shoes – unless you count good old canvas sneakers, aka Keds. The only women’s sport’s apparel widely available (besides those darn cute cheerleader outfits) were for sports that highlighted individual women, who needed to look good while playing. You know – tennis, golf, swimming. Individual sports that required fancy equipment and lessons, so not open to just anyone.

Even though many of us did not benefit from Title IX in childhood, we all benefit today. Now women’s athletic gear is widely available to everyone, from  the pros to the weekend warriors. I even have a women’s specific bike AND a women’s specific tire pump. Women can compete in most sports in the professional and amateur levels. Women are no longer relegated to just being peppy cheerleaders, that is, unless they want to.When you watch the Olympics this year, think about the US women competitors who benefited from Title IX.

Huffygirl, all decked out in women’s athletic gear

Related articles

• Title IX Turns 40, Flaws and All (theroot.com)
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Stop! Don’t put that soda in the overhead bin

My husband and I are seated on a plane, ready to head home after a family vacation. The plane is full. Everyone’s strapped in their seats, ready to go. Take-off begins. Wheels are up, we’re off the ground; as the plane banks left, we both feel cold liquid dripping on our heads. Certainly an ominous sign. Is the plane leaking? This can’t be good. We look up to see big cold drops of brown liquid, which appears to be soda, dripping out of the overhead compartment, splashing on my right side and his left.  The plane levels and straightens out, and the drip stops. This wasn’t just a few drops, more of a soda rain shower. Then, the plane banks left again, and the downpour restarts. By now everyone around us is involved. With each new cloudburst of soda, we hear a chorus of “ohs, eews, and oohs.” Everyone is mobilized. Folks in front and behind us are passing us wadded up Kleenex, folded newspapers, anything to sop up the drips. By now there’s a puddle on the seat between us, my right arm and leg are soaked. With each turn to the left, the downpour restarts. The fasten seat belt sign remains lit. And no help in sight from the flight attendants. We’re only three rows up from the back where some of them are seated, and they’d have to be blind and deaf, to not have noticed the commotion.

And so it goes. With each left turn the soda shower restarts. Are we supposed to just sit here being doused with soda for who knows how long, until the seat belt sign goes off? I have no idea how much is up there – could be a big bottle, a cup, who knows? It’s not okay to bring a 4-ounce bottle of shampoo on the plane, but apparently a Big Gulp is okay. Finally, I unfasten my seat belt so I can reach up and hold the wad of newspapers that someone has handed us right up against the bottom of the compartment to staunch the downpour. This helps some but I can’t do this for long. Then the chimes sound, which I take as a sign that it’s okay to get up. (Turns out it wasn’t.) My soggy husband and I leap from our seats and open the compartment. I need a better look, so now I’m standing on my seat so I can see what’s going on up there. Turns out there is a huge puddle of cold soda sloshing around in the compartment – probably from a bottle that was up there on a previous flight, or from someone’s bag who is afraid to fess up. So here I am, despite the fasten seat belt sign still lit, standing on my seat and mopping up the soda with sections of newspaper that surrounding passengers are passing to us. Still no reaction or help from the flight attendants.

Finally, the flight attendants arise from their coma, or whatever was keeping them from helping, and begin their trip down the aisle. As the closest attendant comes upon us, does she help, or at least ask what’s going on? No. she just expresses her annoyance that we are out of our seats and blocking the aisle. She agrees to bring us some paper towels, if we’d just get out of her way, for God’s sake. We wad up the paper towels into the edges of the compartment to stop the remaining drips that have seeped in under the frame. Every single flight attendant who passes by for the rest of the flight expresses annoyance and asks  why we have these towels shoved up in there. Not “are you okay?”, “do you need anything else?” or “I’m sorry you were doused with cold soda.”

Thank goodness the commotion was only about dripping soda, and not a serious malfunction with the plane, an illness or seizure, or worse yet, a terrorist scuffle. I’ve been seated with wacky people, crying babies and toddlers, kids kicking the back of my seat, and now this. What is your worst inflight experience, and how did you handle it?

(Addendum: I later shared my complaint about the above incident with the airline’s customer service. The agent acknowledged that the flight attendants should have been more attentive and helpful during this incident, and gave me a voucher for a miniscule discount on a future flight.)

© Huffygirl

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My doctor’s office STILL thinks I’m fat, and a troublemaker too

Well, it happened again. Unfortunately, I had to go back there. To the medical office that thinks I’m fat. In case you haven’t heard this story before, the skinny, er fatty is this: the new medical group I’ve been going to has decided that my BMI (ratio of height to weight) qualifies me as overweight, causing them to give me a weight-loss handout (aka fat handout) every time I leave their office.

Against my better judgement, I went back there for a follow-up visit, but this time, determined that I wasn’t going home with the fat handout again. My strategy: if I don’t step on the scale, they won’t record my weight, and won’t be able to give me the fat handout. I went in resolved to avoid the scale at all costs.

“Put down your things and step on the scale,” the medical assistant, whom I’ll call Ethel, says after calling me back into the office. “No, I don’t want to be weighed today,” I answered calmly. I was totally unprepared for the ensuing backlash. “You have to be weighed,” replied Ethel, her voice going up a few decibels. “Um, no I don’t and I don’t care to be weighed today,” I answered, pretty calmly I thought. “But you have to be weighed, it’s our policy,” Ethel replied, putting the same emphasis on the word policy as if she were saying mandate, decree, or law. “Well, no I don’t have to be weighed. I have the right to decline,” I answer back. I’m getting a little worried now about the backlash I’m getting, but I can’t back down now.

Ethel is positively sputtering now. Her voice has gone up well above inside voice level, and I’m a little surprised that she’s carrying on this way in what should be a professional setting. “Well, I’m going to have to get the manager,” she finally sputters back, several times, I might add. She’s positively frantic by now. Apparently, this hasn’t happened before.

The manager? Really? Let’s stop and look at this situation for a minute. The issue that has caused Ethel to go to red alert is that a patient has declined to be weighed. Does she get paid by how many people she weighs every day? Or does she get beaten or fired if she doesn’t weigh every patient? Now granted, there are a few groups who really should be weighed at their health care visits: children; anyone being seen for unexplained weight loss or illness; persons with chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease or kidney disease, pregnant women, and people who are ill. But I don’t fall into any of these groups. I was just there a few weeks earlier and was weighed then, so this really shouldn’t be an emergency now.

But, back to reality. Ethel is still sputtering about calling the manager and their policy. She’s positively shrieking now. I would expect the manager to be more upset about her unprofessional behavior than the cranky patient who declined to be weighed. So finally to stop the standoff,  I told her to ask the provider I was seeing, and if she insisted that I be weighed I would do it, but otherwise not. “Well, we’ll just see about that” Ethel answered as she shuttled me back to the exam room.

So back in the exam room, I talked to my provider and told the whole awful story. She’s good-natured and understanding, unlike the others in this office. “I’m just sick of getting the fat handout every time I come here,” I told her. “I’m really not overweight, it’s just that I’m too short. If you could make me a little taller, I’d stop getting the fat handout.  An inch should do it”

So, I finished up the visit and left, not sure if she was willing to go out on a limb to save me from the fat handout. Then, I looked at the papers they handed me at checkout. I know I was 5′ 2″ when I came into the office. But on the way out, I had turned into 5’7″.

© Huffygirl 2012

Related articles

• My doctor’s office thinks I’m fat (huffygirl.wordpress.com)

Little bagels? I think not.

Okay, a week ago I didn’t know what a Baggallini was. Last week, while shopping with my sister-in-law who is getting ready for an out of country adventure, she suddenly went into a fit of excitement when she saw a sign outside a store proclaiming that they carried Baggallini. All bets were off as we headed inside. Haplessly, I followed, wondering why anyone would be that excited about miniature bagels. Then, I found out.

Turns out that Baggallini is not a little bagel, but  a whole line of practical and unique purses. But these aren’t just purses – they’re useful purses, with cross-body straps, appurtenances, and zippered pockets. Made of sturdy, lightweight nylon material, Baggallini are designed by flight attendants. Who better to know what kinds of zippers and pockets one needs to make a purse actually useful, especially for travel? But Baggallini are stylish enough to use every day, not just for travel, although Stacy and Clinton, who insist that one’s purse must match one’s outfit, might not agree.

I had been looking for a cross-body purse ever since I had shoulder surgery in January. I still can’t carry a purse on my right shoulder, or anything else for that matter, so I’ve been schlepping around for two and a half  months trying to carry everything in one arm. Hoisting around my somewhat stylish, but way too heavy purse, did not help. Besides carrying the  floppy, heavy purse on my left arm, I was carrying my brief case, lunch bag, extra sweater, papers for work and my other extra sweater. (Okay, so I admit it: I wear two sweaters.) Getting anything out of my purse, unlocking doors, or doing much of anything was difficult. I had searched the major department stores for a cross-body purse that would hold the essentials, yet still be somewhat stylish, to no avail. Everything I found was either too big, too small, too expensive, or just not practical.

But not anymore. The Baggallini is a little small, but I think will do. I had to sacrifice a few things from my old heavy purse to get the essentials in. Extra change, a pack of gum, a few credit cards I never use, checkbook, and a smashed Luna bar wait forlornly in the bottom of my heavy old purse. Maybe I’ll regret not having the Luna bar, but the rest I can probably do without. All in the name of carrying a lighter, efficient purse that doesn’t hurt my poor old shoulder.

Goodbye heavy purse. Hello Baggallini.

© Huffygirl

Disclaimer: This is not an ad for Baggallini. It’s just that I’m so darn excited about my efficient new purse!

Huffygirl does not endorse Baggallini or any other products, nor does she receive any incentives for writing about Baggallini.

Related link:

• Travels With Mary Sue

My transformation to the dark side is complete

Image via Wikipedia

Yes, it has happened. I’ve turned to the dark side. I’ve become the person I never wanted to be – a digital, HD-subscribing, lazy, shiftless TV watcher with not one, but four TVs. I never intended for this to happen. What have I become?

It started so insidiously. Long ago, when I first met my husband, I didn’t even know about the dark side. Sure I had watched TV as a kid, but I didn’t inhale.  We only had two channels anyway, and programming stopped after the late movie, turning the screen to static or test patterns, so it was easy to stay on the good side of the force. Once I started dating my husband, we were too busy being in love, making our own granola and polishing our wire-rimmed glasses  to spend much time watching TV. I was not allowed to have a TV in my dorm room, and he did not have a TV in his apartment, so soon we even forgot what shows were on the now three TV channels.

When we got married, my in-laws offered us a choice of a gift – a brand new color TV, or something else of our choosing of equivalent value. Of course we chose “something else” – what did we need a TV for when we were so in love? Besides, we were busy recycling, washing our hemp clothing and listening to the music of “Hair” on our state of the art phonograph. Still, my in-laws thought we might be out of touch without a TV, for God’s sake, so they gave us an old black and white one that a neighbor had thrown out on the curb. The on-off switch was broken, as was one of the rabbit ears, so if we did watch it we had to plug/unplug it to turn it off and on. We kept it in the spare room and dragged it out once or twice a year.

Now fast forward a few years to the arrival of those sneaky demons, otherwise known as children.  We wanted to catch some educational programming for them, so we succumbed to order cable. By then it was nearly impossible to pick up anything over the airwaves with our one rabbit ear anyway. Now we had about 36 channels, including a new one that was all about sports – ES something or other. Still, we severely regulated TV in our house. The kids could not turn the TV on, as they weren’t allowed to touch the plug (still no on-off knob), and we stuck to mostly PBS and edifying shows. But, parental fatigue was a strong temptress. Tired out from being up all night with kids? Flop down in front of the TV. Cranky baby that won’t go to sleep? Johnny Carson.

Fast forward to our kid’s teen years. “Gee Mom and Dad, none of our friends have to watch an old black and white TV with no on/off switch.” So we caved and bought a state of the art used color TV. We had gone from Kansas to Oz.

With our kids leading the way, little by little we succumbed to upgrades. Our oldest son moved home and brought two TVs. Sure one of them was a state of the art 1987 and the channel changer did not work, but hey the color was great. And so it went until we arrived at the place we are today: four TVs, fancy cable, and now, finally, HD. Sure, I still forget about the HD channels and can’t remember the numbers anyway, but by gosh, the potential is there. I’m becoming the person I never thought I’d be.

© Huffygirl 2012

Related links:

• Huffy goes digital  (huffygirl.wordpress.com)
• Sad to say, the high point of my week is The Middle (huffygirl.wordpress.com)

Happy Leap Day

Enjoy today. It’s your bonus day that won’t come around again for another four years. Besides resting up for tomorrow, so you’ll be ready to march first, what will you do with your extra day?

© Huffygirl Leap Day 2012