Invisible Woman

I love wearing contacts ... when I have a choice.

I lost my glasses case, with glasses inside, on the beach yesterday. (Those are the ones -- there, in my profile photo.) Not sure if it was down on the low-tide sand, in which case they're long lost at sea, or if it was after I moved up to higher ground to avoid the incoming tide. Ticks me off, 'cause when I moved upstairs I noticed I'd dropped my cell phone. You'd think I'd have noticed a black glasses case. And when I was up above, I was lying on the blanket for a while -- if the case was at that level, can't figure out why I didn't notice it.

Be that as it may, the case, and the glasses, are gone.

I do have a backup pair that predated my Bifocal Era by many years, so they're no good for reading but would suffice for allowing me to watch TV late at night IF ONLY I COULD FIND THEM. AGAIN. They also disappeared when my previous primary pair of glasses broke a few years ago. Hmmmm. It's like they know something. They turned up unexpectedly when I was moving last year, and of course I can't remember either where I found them or where I put them. My search continues, although it's kind of a pain to dig out buried containers where they might be hidden. Can't believe I didn't immediately put them either in my headboard or in my car's glovebox, but they're in neither location.

So in the meantime, I'm stuck with wearing contacts for longer than I should, and all I want to do is claw my eyes out. It's like being claustrophic and unable to get out.

I went back this morning to the spot where I was on the beach yesterday and had no luck. I called all the official places that have lost & founds with no luck, and placed lost ads on craigslist and in the local paper (it starts running tomorrow). In my search this morning I found a metal-detector scavenger guy scouring the vicinity and he said he hadn't hit on it, but that the metal detector was sensitive enough that it should hit on the hinges in the glasses if it gets near them, so I got him on my side. I've done all I can think of to do, short of getting up early every morning in hopes they've washed up on shore.

Anyone wanna pay for me to have Lasik?

I've been spending a lot of beach time book-less (and ending up in elsewherementioned really scary places in my head) 'cause I've misplaced the copy of "Childhood's End" I've been nibbling at again in memory of Arthur C. Clarke after he died earlier this year, so yesterday I perused the Warner Library and landed on a hardcover of "Dave Barry Turns 50."

I just turned 50, I thought, so this seems appropriate. Also, I have a collection of Dave Barry books I've never read because I could essentially write them in my head without cracking the cover, he got so predictable, so he fell out of favor with me, but I'm happy to report I've been laughing my ass off (no small feat, trust me)(also, no small ass) at the beach the past couple of days.

Also, I was caught by surprise when I opened the book and found the inscription, "Peg -- Good luck with your humorous career." Totally forgot that was the book he had just released when he did a book-signing in Portsmouth (at, what was the name of that bookstore on Route 1? Stroudwater, I think?) and I stood in line. I did that not so much out of admiration at the time (see above re: predictability), but because from the late '80s, when I discovered him, into the early '90s, when his columns began to seem ... mmmmm, repetitive ... he was my hero and my role model. It was because of him that I had any notion that one could make a living writing shallow humor -- and I don't mean that in a bad way -- and I aspired to be womanhood's answer to Dave Barry. (And when I later discovered Anna Quindlen, I aspired to be both of them.) Even had a regular column for a time in the newspaper where I mostly worked as a responsible journalist, in which I fancied that I was distilling lofty ideas into accessibly funny bits. It was only in retrospect that I realized just how far short I had fallen of what I thought I was doing. Not really a surprise, then, I guess, that my attempts to get someone to syndicate me never bore fruit.

Didn't remember having a long enough conversation with Barry at that book-signing, though, for him to write something that would conjure up that period.

Now. About my desire to do stand-up comedy ...

It's been way too long -- 12 years -- since the last time I donated blood. Used to do it regularly, often at the earliest bloodmobile available after I became eligible again. I started when I was 17, a good habit I'm thankful Dad instilled in me. As I became entrenched in the working world, the intervals between donations lengthened, but I never stopped completely, either catching a bloodmobile or going to the Red Cross Blood Center in Bangor.

I intended to continue it once I moved to NH, really I did, but various personal dramas and a brutal work schedule made it difficult to fit into my day. I did donate once, the first December I lived in NH, before driving back to Maine for the holiday. Since then, whenever I've seen posters announcing blood drives I would tell myself, oh, I need to remember that, but somehow never did, except for once. After 9/11, when there was such a push to get people to donate and such an outpouring of people doing so, I did try, at St. Michael in Exeter, but the line was long, and I was under a time crunch, and well, it just never happened.

Broke the drought today. There was a Red Cross blood drive at the beach, which you might think would be perfect for me, given how much time I spend there. But the drive only went until 4 p.m. (tip to the Red Cross -- schedule the drives later and get people coming off the beach, AFTER they've been swimming) and I had other things to do before I could go to the beach for *fun*, so I ended up making a special trip to give blood. No big. What it meant , though, was circling around a couple of times to look for acceptable (free, on-street) parking and, finding none, circliing around a couple more times scouting for acceptable (close to the bloodmobile) *metered* parking. A satisfactory one opened up as I was about to give up. Then I had to estimate how long it would take so as not to pump in more quarters than necessary. I certainly hope whoever gets my blood appreciates the effort. (Tip for the Red Cross -- validate parking!)

I call giving blood the poor woman's physical -- iron check, temperature check, blood-pressure check. The process is essentially still the same as it always was, with some technological advancements. I've failed the iron test sometimes in the past, and once or twice had to have my blood spun in the crit (I think that's what it's called) as a backup or whatever when it didn't float to the bottom of the fluid fast enough for their liking.  Now, of course, it's all digitized, and mine was 13-point-something, well above the 12-point-something needed to be eligible (guess taking myself out to breakfast wasn't such a bad idea, except maybe for my cholesterol).  My temp was 98.6 -- actually 98-point-freaking-6. I hate being so on-the-nose, but I like the '60s song. My blood pressure was 102/70, on the low side like I like. Despite my advanced weight (thankfully they didn't make me stand on a scale), I at least can continue to thumb my nose whenever Dad insists I should follow a high-blood-pressure diet just because he has to. But with those stats, I told the R.N. who processed me, I've never felt so bland. When it comes to giving blood, bland is good, she said, then launched into the excruciating series of questions about my health and, uh, let's just call it "history," that never fails to make me take stock of certain aspects of my life and end up feeling like I've wasted a lot of time -- now more than ever. Huh -- maybe there's another reason I've been avoiding these things.

That's the point where the poor woman's physical turns into the poor woman's therapy session. This time, I kept it down to one tissue, especially when the R.N., who was cool to commiserate with me instead of slapping me upside the head, related a personal tidbit of her own that put my own problems into perspective. Somewhat. That was a cool bonding moment.

But it wasn't all heavy. One of the other nurses was a dead ringer for Turk on "Scrubs," so I was enjoying that bit of eye candy, and joined in when he started singing along to "Maneater" on the radio. And there were a couple of cute younger men in the waiting area who actually acknowledged my presence without calling me "miss" (see the "call me ma'am" post). And of course, there was the free food and juice (the latter made me kinda glad I never had kids and  missed the whole juice box trend -- those things is complicated!). And on this occasion, there was a lovely view of the beach and, out the other window, better people-watching than I remember at other bloodmobiles. I told the staff they should have set up the cots on the roof of their little RV so we could catch a few rays while squeezing every few seconds. AND, they were giving away free Red Sox t-shirts.

It was after 5 before I got back to the beach for my more accustomed purpose. I wasn't supposed to get the needle stick area wet, so it's a good thing "swimming" to me usually just consists of "wading in up to my waist and letting the waves wash over me." But have you ever tried to do that and still keep your inner elbow dry?

Don't let anyone kid you; being a 50-year-old woman may look glamorous in the movies, but in real life it's not all that and a bag of fiber wafers. You're too old to pull off belly shirts, but too young yet to qualify for senior discounts. Shopping for bathing suits becomes an even fresher hell than usual.

Worse -- too often, you're invisible to the rest of society. People brush you aside, or simply walk through you like you're Patrick Swayze in "Ghost." Young men look right past you, even while you're carrying on a conversation with them, 'cause they just ain't gots the time to waste actually paying attention to you. I had to grow my shocking silver hair (not a badge of age, incidentally; I found the first glint of gray in my brown hair at 14 and was half-n-half by 25, at which point I was pleasantly surprised to learn that a lot of people actually liked it) down to my butt, Emmylou Harris-style, just to minimize the chances of getting lost in the crowd. (And to give my blog a title.)

If they're not looking through you, they're overcompensating with condescension. Case in point: Yesterday, I brought my car in to the nearest chain lube place for an oil change. As I headed outside to drive off after paying, the 12-year-old who had worked on it brought me up short by cheerily wishing me, "Have a nice day, miss."

"Miss." This was not the first time. It's still only anecdotal, but my trendspotting antennae have detected an unmistakable acceleration in the  incidence of this salutation, chiefly within the service industry, in direct proportion to my advancing age. I remember (sort of) back in my -- what, 20s? 30s? -- the opposite rite of passage: the first time a store clerk called me "ma'am." A little part of me died that day as I realized I'd probably never again get carded trying to buy beer or get into a dance club. Has even "ma'am" now passed along with my waning fertility?

This latest indignity, though, makes me think wistfully upon the "ma'am" days. "Miss"? Really? The first time it happened was jarring, perhaps because even when "miss" was more age-appropriate to me, I never used it. Instead, I adopted what I considered the more progressive-sounding "ms." as my courtesy title of choice, happily checking off the option on magazine subscriptions, health forms, employment applications, announcing to the world that I was a Modern Woman. "Miss" just never sounded much like me to begin with, at least not since I was around 13 and latched onto a feminist movement I didn't yet even understand. But what's going through the heads of these people? Do they think I don't know how old I am? Sure, I don't wear a ring, sure, I'm not married, so technically, in Emily Post-world, I AM still a "miss," I guess. But I can't even delude myself -- however youthful I feel inside or however childish I behave outwardly, however many times a week I wear tie-dyed t-shirts, all it takes is a look in the mirror or an all-too-frequent bad knee day to snap me back to reality. If I can't fool myself, surely I can't deceive you, whippersnapper. Now get off my lawn.

I suppose, though, there'll come a day when I look back even on this stage fondly. That day -- the day I give myself the full Kevorkian -- will be when someone, somewhere, describes me as "__ years young."