It Has Been A Funny Old Year

Posted in 2016, ageing, Christmas, christmas decorations by buzzanniebee

Greetings ~

2016 (not that it is over yet, but my head is full of Christmas bauble plans already, so it is fast heading that way) has been one to remember. At Bee HQ it has been a weird mixture of very good (moving to a new house/planning a new garden/discovering a new county/the addition of two kittens to the family) and very bad (family illness/Brexit/Trump/the zombie apocalypse – oh! no that hasn’t happened yet, but surely can only be just around the corner).

But as I get older, I am trying not to wish these times away. There is an art to taking the rough with the smooth, and although I am not known for my optimism, I am working on accepting things the way they are and not spending too much time worrying about either the past or the future, but just enjoying BEING.

If change makes you anxious, it can be a tough gig being a human being, and I am talking from my extremely warm and comfy house in rural Oxfordshire. This is hardly Aleppo; I am not a refugee fleeing my country for a better life. I am hugely privileged and for that I am very grateful and thankful, every single day. Mr Bee and I have found ourselves custodians of a very beautiful old house and we often walk around, wide-eyed in wonder at the beauty and luck at finding ourselves the current owners. So any change in our lives tends to be the sort that many people the world over would jump at dealing with. But change is unsettling for some of us, and 2016 has brought on some big, big changes for many.

So let’s get back to baubles, where my muddy-menopause-mind is on safe ground.

Christmas has always been very special in my family. We take it pretty seriously. My dear Dad was a fiend at putting decorations everywhere he could get away with. Things dangled from ceilings and curtain rails and tinsel adorned every picture hanging on the wall. The tree often looked like the Christmas Fairy had thrown up on it – no colour co-ordination or ‘theme’ in the 1960s and ’70s. It didn’t matter what it looked like per se as long as all the decorations were up somewhere.

I am rather more fussy, but the same principle applies: Christmas is important and the tree (or trees – is one enough?), the lights, the colours, the food, the family, the warmth, is very special. This year it is going to mark the end of a strange 12 months for us, and many others too.

Perhaps the very fact that I am writing about the end of 2016 and it is still November suggests I am not quite there yet with the ‘living in the moment’ ideal I talk about. I prefer to think that maybe I just have a child-like enjoyment of Christmas and am not that good at mindfulness.

~ how soon in Dec can I get away with putting up the tree?

Annie Bee x

11Nov2015

The Everlasting Menopause ~ Is There An Upside?

Posted in 50+, ageing, Health, menopause, Women by buzzanniebee

If, like me, you have been dealing with the menopause for absolutely ages (as my memory has been melted by the hot flushes, I am having to guess that I am now entering my 5th year) you might be wondering whether this mid-life cloud has a silver lining. My initial answer would be, ‘does it bollox’ but let’s see.

I turned to my Personal Assistant, Google, and asked the question.

First up is Web MD and a cheerful obs-gyny doctor from Maine who suggests that,

“The truth is that women over 50 are just hitting their stride,” she writes in the introduction of her new book, The Secret Pleasures of Menopause.

So secret that they are certainly hidden from me. She goes on to say,

“You can turn yourself on. You can rewire your brain and your body to feel more pleasure. The brain is the biggest sex organ in the body.”

Hmmmm.

I must say there are plenty of listings on Google for what can improve the menopause (yoga, exercise, nitric oxide, acupuncture, hops, and a neck-cooler to mention a few) but not so many for the upside. I do eventually find some joker who says this,

“Menopause is a gift, a lantern lighting the way to significant transformation in all areas of your life………. menopause is not the wicked witch. She does not drain women of any vital function nor turn them old, weak, crotchety, or unattractive with a wave of her wand”.

As youngsters (for whom their 50s is light years away) might say: ~ LOL

There is some information out there which I do agree with: Yes, it is natural. Yes, it (eventually) means no more periods and contraception. But is it a stage during which, as this cheerful woman suggest,

“…. the door opens to receive the wisdom of our lineage”?

That may be a step too far, even for the most optimistic of us. I’m not sure I even know what it means.

My only hope is that it is nearing the end. I can’t say my symptoms (brain atrophy, hot flushes, poor sleep are the highlights) have left me feeling particularly cheery.

Menopausal rant over ~ I feel a lot better already and I haven’t even got my neck-cooler out.

Annie Bee x

13Aug2015

It’s An Age Thing

Posted in ageing, friendship, youthful by buzzanniebee

I was out the other day with one of my very oldest of friends – we have been buddies for nearly 4 decades. During the course of our ramblings we covered mothers, losing our fathers, marriage, grief, gardening, diet, exercise, ex-boyfriends, schools, grey hair, children, health, money, the menopause, work, holidays: in 2 hours we touched on pretty much everything. Nothing is off limits.

Several times I heard myself saying, “well, it’s our age”.

“Isn’t it hilarious how we both love gardening?”

“Well, it’s our age”.

Our interest in healthy eating: – it’s our age. Our newfound specialist knowledge about dementia: – it’s our age. Sore knees after exercising? – yes, you’ve got it.

Our friendship has spanned forty years and we have changed, moved, made mistakes, lost touch and survived some ups and downs. At any point on that path, so much of what we did, decisions we made, things we said, places we went and people we shared our lives with were quite simply down to our age. In our teens we both did some mad things, as all youngsters do. But we did what seemed completely right at any given time.

Things may not be 100% perfect for either of us, but we are healthy and happy and getting on with what life is currently throwing at us. We still feel young, we ARE young! Long may that last.

It’s a funny old life.

Annie Bee x

29Jul2015

Hooray For Wednesdays

Posted in ageing, exercise, interval training, Wednesday, Wednesdays by buzzanniebee

It is mid-week and I have a day of pottering about ahead of me, running errands, teaching, and getting through my to do list before the week disappears. Let’s hope the “sunny intervals with scattered showers” doesn’t slow me down.

I leave you with two thoughts before I head out and get on with my day:

After a great workout yesterday, being coaxed by one of the Baby Bees to change-up my interval training with some lunges, squats and jump-jacks, I am feeling on top form. Ready for action.

Have a great mid-week

Annie Bee x

3Apr2015

I Have Miraculously Gained A Year

Posted in 50+, ageing by buzzanniebee

As my birthday approaches I checked the maths and realised I will be 52 and not the 53 which I had in my head. I am young !! When I mentioned this to Mr Bee, it transpired he also thought I was going to be 53. (As I said in a recent post, those anti-ageing creams do not seem to work and here we have the proof).

Imagine if we were all given an extra year in reality – what we do with it? Learn a language? Write a book? Go and live abroad for 12 months?

Food for thought.

Have a super Easter weekend wherever you are.

Annie Bee x

27Mar2015

Is the Over 50s Woman Invisible?

Posted in 50+, ageing, Women by buzzanniebee

I was out walking one morning this week and I passed a series of small groups of young women (in their 30s I guess) running the same route. Some of them acknowledged me, but many didn’t. Why should they? They don’t know me, I was looking pretty uninteresting (bedraggled some might say), there was no reason to chat (although a Hello is always nice). It struck me that maybe I have become invisible. To begin with I was appalled at this notion, but over the past few days I have come to realise that maybe it is a relief. It got me thinking once again about the whole ageing conundrum.

I don’t think there is a fear of ageing per se, I think we are scared of bad health as we age, and then the sure-fire death which awaits us all.

“I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens” ~ Woody Allen

The ageing process is unstoppable. Trying to slow it down accounts for a very lucrative market though: all told it is worth an estimated £180 billion globally this year. That is a lot of creams, procedures, supplements and corsetry. Does any of it work? Well not if my neck is anything to go by. Much of the wording around these products is noticebaly negative: ‘anti-ageing’, ‘skin corrector’ and ‘time delay’ all found in the first 20 pages of a magazine I have to hand, all appealing to our deep-seated insecurities. Well, you can run ladies, but you cannot hide. Ageing is here to stay.

Nora Ephron, in her autobiographical book of short essays, I Feel Bad About My Neck, wrote

Oh the necks. There are chicken necks. There are turkey-gobbler necks. There are elephant necks. There are necks with wattles and necks with creases that are on the verge of becoming wattles. There are scrawny necks and fat necks, loose necks, crêpey necks, banded necks, wrinkled necks, stringy necks, flabby necks, mottled necks…..You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn’t have to if you had a neck.

If you are in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or beyond and are as fit as a flea, your mindset won’t be in a negative loop about poor health and death. Or I hope it isn’t. But sadly there is a tendency that we start to hear bad news about friends in our and their sixth decades; people we know have heart attacks, strokes and get the news they have cancer. It can be a gloomy old time.

On the other hand, I would argue it is not all bad by any stretch of the imagination. The women I know in their 50s are more self-aware than ever before. We are savvy, accepting, stylish and have adjusted to life’s limitations and are ready to enter the FAB (fifties and beyond) era with grace and well-positioned scarves to hide the wattle. There are plenty of challenges (elderly parents, teenage children, an empty nest, menopause, divorce, health issues – take your pick) but I know I am much more capable in my 50s of dealing with these than I was in previous decades. No sensible shoes just yet then.

“It’s sad to grow old, but nice to ripen” ~ Brigitte Bardot

There is certainly truth in the adage that we are as old as we feel. Ageing is a process whereby at various stages we want it to go very fast – small children want to be older so they can stay up later; teenagers want to be older so they can go to the pub with friends or learn to drive a car; in your twenties you perhaps want to be older in order to increase your earning power, or fulfil your career ambitions. Then later on we want to slow it down or halt it all together – neither is possible of course. There are limitations imposed right through the various decades, but it is surely about accepting them and embracing the constant adjustments we all end up making throughout our lives which will give us the greatest happiness.

Portrait of an Old Woman by Graham Brindley

There are a few blogs I like which show that style is still available to the older woman and that it is worthwhile not giving in just yet:

http://thatsnotmyage.blogspot.co.uk/

http://agirlsguidetoturning50.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.notdressedaslamb.com/

So no, we are not invisible. Is acceptance of our age and all it brings the answer? Or should we fight against it?

I am not sure. What do you think?

Annie Bee x

24Mar2015

Surprising Finds #2 ~ Four Sisters Over Forty Years

Posted in ageing, photos, sisters by buzzanniebee

Hello again

I came across this inspiring series of photos of four sisters, taken over the course of forty years. The beauty of the slow transformation of the women is worth your time, but to tempt you to have a good look, here is the first taken in 1975 and the latest.