Visit the kelpforest....

runsamuck went and picked up my new reading glasses from the optometrist the other day. I've finally gotten to that age - a few years later than average, luckily - where I need different lenses for distance and close-up; I've started to have to hold my phone (which I keep on fairly small type in the hopes that it'll discourage others from reading over my shoulder) farther and farther away. Dr. Hiro and I talked about whether I really needed bifocals, which I understand are pain to get used to, and maybe more trouble than they're worth, or just a pair of reading glasses. runsamuck likes his bifocals, but I decided on the latter.

And yes they're very nice for reading - letters nice and sharp and black, with very crisp edges. Now that I'm here at work looking at my monitor, I'm not so sure though. It's a little farther away than a book, and if I lean back in my chair at all things start getting blurry.

On a little switching back and forth with both pairs, it seems the new ones are definitely better for books, but maybe not so much for the computer screen. And I find I'm not thrilled with having to change them every time I get up, so more than four feet away from me isn't out of focus. Maybe I should have gone with the bifocals. Ah well, they're all ready paid for, so I guess I'll be ok with them until next year.


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* No, not The Piña Colada Song. It's Nearsighted, off the same album. Kind of corny, but I always liked it.

I'm sorry but the subtitle for the Monitor's review of New Moon, just made me laugh.

"The latest in the 'Twilight' series, 'New Moon' follows a moping Bella who continues to have poor choice in men."

As much as I used to be a big fan of vampires (is Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Tapes still in print?), the more I hear of the Twilight series, the less I think I would like it. I know I'm totally NOT the demographic this is aimed at, and I've never been a huge fan of the romance genre anyway, but teenage romance stories have been grating on me lately. For cripes sake, how many people are with the same person they dated in high school - and I qualify that with the fact that, yes, I do know of a few personally, but as a whole it's pretty rare. My own high school love life was, if not a disaster, fairly bleak. That continued until I was in college - mostly due to my own social ineptness, I'm now seeing.

And I'm probably missing a major plot point here because I haven't read the books or seen the movie, but - whatinhell's a more than a century old vampire doing cruising the local high school for underage chicks anyway? Makes the typical Hollywood age difference pairing thing (i.e. Catherine Zeta-Jones/Sean Connery) seem positively appropriate.

WHERE ARE THE KICK ASS MIDDLE-AGED FAT HEROINES WITH GRAYING HAIR DAMMIT?!

Oh, that's right. They all became moms, or priestesses, or nuns or something. Not that those aren't worthy worthwhile things, but not the stuff that sells a lot of books or summerblockbuster movies, unless they've become the aging revenge-driven head of an evil corporation/religion/empire that has to be destroyed before the epilogue.

*Grumps *

getoffamylawnyadamnkids...

I stumbled across this webcomic ( in fortysomething) because I will pretty much click any link presented to me (I'm kind of a sucker that way).  And discovered a lovely and poignant webcomic, that will probably resonate with anyone whose parents may be getting older.  Or knowing someone in a number of other situations.

The Walk

This could be any one us, sometime in the future. 

My father is 82.  We live with him, so we've sort of become the default caretakers - not that he needs much, he's in good shape.  Truth to tell, it's mutually beneficial, as we get to live in the house I grew up in, in a neighborhood we could not afford these days.  My kids are going to the school I went to as a kid.  But I always wonder how this is going to wind up. 

I've discussed with my brother, how sometimes I dread knocking on the door of his bedroom, the room where my mother also passed away, and one day, getting no response.  And my brother looked at me and said, "You know, Leeanne, that's really the best case scenario."

I dread it.  But I know it's going to happen.  It may not be for awhile yet.  His mother only passed away six years ago, having lived to be a hundred.  But I'm trying to be prepared.

Earlier in the summer, tsunami warning signs began appearing along the beaches, and on the downhill side of the streets heading to the coast. My part of the city is located on a mesa, so it is the high ground everyone would be running too. This sign is a couple of blocks from my house. And we've got that OC grafitti going on already; that little sticker guy already appeared here.

( Uphill side of the street... )

I guess it's another sign I'm getting old - it puzzles me. When I was in high school (and granted, I started high school in the fall of the year of this country's Bicentennial), there actually was a dress code. Fairly lax, since this was a public school in Southern California, but one of the things against the rules was wearing clothes that exposed your midriff. Not one I ever really worried about, since I have never had a midriff worth exposing, even then. And my mother had a strong Puritanical streak, so she wouldn't even allow us to wear shorts to school. I left that kind of thing to the pair of girls in my algebra class - the ones who spent the whole class period applying lip gloss and perfume and redoing their makeup.*

Now, however, it seems to be de regueur. I drive past the same high school on my way to work, and a good half of the female students wear not only a shirt that ends slightly above the bottom of her rib cage, but jeans that seem to be painted on and that she must have to shave her pubic hair to be able to wear. Cheerleader uniforms follow the same trends, and even many of the cartoons my kids watch depict teens dressed the same way (Kim Possible and Totally Spies come to mind). Toys too. Don't even get me started on Bratz dolls - that's a whole 'nother post.

Personally, even if I had the proper shape to wear stuff like that, I'd get cold. And I'm kind of mystified when I see people my shape who do wear it. My neighbor's daughter across the street graduated from high school, and continued to wear the same clothes, even though she gained about 30 pounds shortly thereafter. VT was telling me about a woman she was behind in a line at Disneyland who actually had rolls exposed. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for diversity in body shapes, but when your belly and sides are lapping over the top of your pants, you need new pants, woman.

I don't pay much attention to fashion, except when it starts making the people who follow it look stupid.

John's attitude, of course, being male, is "Why didn't girls wear that kind of stuff when I was in high school?" And then he shakes himself and thinks "Wait a minute - my daughter is going to be going to that school someday!"
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*They came to school on Halloween dressed as a pair of breasts one time, and walked around holding hands all day. I guess the teachers didn't realize what they were (seperately) or they'd have gotten sent home. Even though they had "Tit" and "Tat" written across the backs of their costumes.

I just had to go look up "oh snap;" I had a sneaking suspicion from context, but I really didn't know what it meant.

So, today I am 40. I'm not sure how I should feel about this. I didn't think I was going to feel any different, but for some reason I feel somewhat depressed, whichis unusual, considering I like birthdays. I never planned on suddenly not celebrating them once I reached a certain age. I think that it's more a function of missing certain people who are no longer here, which I actually started feeling a couple of weeks ago.

I suppose I should post something long and insightful about entering my fourth decade, but I'm at work right now, and to tell the truth, nothing insightful is coming to me and I'm really not in the mood.

God, I'm morose. Suffice to say that my birthday's not a big deal, but it'd be nice if people remembered it. John tells me he has a surprise for me later. Heh, he can't even keep a surprise a surprise.

(Edited: By "people," I was thinking about my family and people I've known forever. I wasn't trying to malign any of you great people on my friends list - you guys are the icing on the cake!)

So why did the car smell like bologna this morning? Yech!

I finally made an optometrist appt. this morning. Gareth lost my glasses probably more than a year ago and I have been putting off getting them replaced. My prescription is not strong enough that I have to put my glasses on when I roll out of bed and half the time I forget them anyway. But lately I’ve been squinting more and more at my screen and when I get home my eyes hurt.. I hate adjusting the settings on my monitor - I like everything to be small enough for minimal scrolling - sometimes I have to because it’s causing too much eyestrain.

What was my Dad saying earlier? Something about don’t get old?

Sometimes I fall into the bad habit of measuring others by my own experiences. At lunchtime, someone was discussing Anna Nicole Smith’s train wreck of a TV show, and someone mentioned, "I feel sorry for her kid, having to go to school and face his fellow students, when his mom has that show!"

I shook my head in consternation, and said "She has a teenager?!" Too me, not only does she not seem capable, she doesn’t seem old enough. "Oh yes," D. said. "She’s my age, at least." And while D. is 8 years younger than me, I know she has a nearly-14-year-old son, though you wouldn’t think it to look at her.

I have this mistaken bias that I’m in the same age group as other mom’s with kids my age, when the truth is that many of them are as much as twenty years my junior, and many people my age have kids ready to leave home (or already have).

I’m a late bloomer in many respects. It’s confusing sometimes.

I'm approaching forty and I think the body is beginning to fall apart. My right wrist has been aching for the past couple of weeks, the top of my left shoulder hurts when I raise my arm or reach backwards, a knot between my shoulder blades will not go away completely, and this morning my right knee aches for some unexplained reason. I don't mind the gray racing stripes in my hair so much, but how the hell did I get to be nearly middle-aged? Better go get some Depends, I guess.

However, the other day I was telling John about the latest LJ trend of doing a Google search on your name. He looked at me and said, "You know, mentally, you're about 16, aren't you." Yeah, and you're how old? Nine?