The Bag Lady wrote such an entertaining guest post for The Goat’s Lunch Pail last month that I insisted she do another one.
Here it is:
Sweatin’ With the Oldies
The Bag Lady has a little problem to discuss with all of you regarding the effects of aging. Well, actually, the Bag Lady has a lot of problems, but this is the one on her tiny mind today!
There’s a television commercial for a certain type of moisturizing cream that shows a woman covering her head with the blankets, saying "I’m starting to get wrinkles." When she takes the blankets off her head, she looks about 14 years old, not a wrinkle in sight.
What’s with that?
What kind of message is that sending those of us who actually DO have a wrinkle or two? The Bag Lady wonders; is life over because she has a few laugh lines? Couldn’t they have at least used someone with a few more years under her belt? That commercial doesn’t make a person want to buy their product – it makes a person want to slit her wrists!
There’s not a moisturizer on the market that’s going to make the Bag Lady look half as good as that ‘child’, so why bother?
There’s another commercial for eyeglasses. The slender, gorgeous woman was turning 50 and wanted to up-date her look, or something. As loath as the Bag Lady is to admit it, she will be 50 in a couple of months, so decided she needed to up-date her look, too, but eye-glasses just weren’t going to cut it!
The Bag Lady needed to lose a little extra poundage, and get into better shape, as well as discard for once and for all her totally disgusting smoking habit. Well, so far she’s lost 15 lb., re-gained 5 lb., quit smoking for a month, and then started again, quit again, and started again. Maybe she’ll just get new glasses and say the hell with it!
There’s a lot to be said for turning 50. For some reason, it makes you want to sit down and take stock of your life. Well, at least, it makes the Bag Lady want to sit down.
Her hips hurt. Her legs hurt, too. She can’t work as hard as she once could. Nor as fast, either. She starts out with good intentions, but runs out of steam pretty quickly. Well, except for the steam caused by the hot flashes, but that certainly doesn’t help get anything done! Just makes her want to sit down again.
The Bag Lady probably shouldn’t complain - things could be a lot worse. She has enjoyed good health for most of her life, except for a nasty battle with heel spurs that lasted three years. She finally had to have them blasted with shock-wave therapy. It took a little while, but it worked. Her feet feel a lot better.
Now her hips and legs hurt. Apparently, her pain is caused by back trouble. One of her vertebrae has slipped forward and is pinching her spinal cord, which is what causes the pain in her hips and down her legs. Sheesh, just when one part starts to heal up, another part goes to hell.
The Bag Lady wonders; is this what turning 50 does to a person? Your body goes to hell and you start complaining to everyone who’ll listen?
The problem with that is that nobody cares – they have their own problems! So from now on, she thinks what turning 50 should be about is to make a vow not to bore people to death with a litany of the problems with her bodily functions and to try to appear interested when she’s subjected to a litany of someone else’s problems with their bodily functions. Well, except their bowel functions…the Bag Lady has to draw the line somewhere!
Yep, new eyeglasses might be just the thing – and they’ll probably have to be bifocals.
Showing posts with label The Bag Lady. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Bag Lady. Show all posts
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Pretty or Petty, or Pretty Petty?
The Bag Lady was such a good interview subject that I thought she ought to do a guest post. I was thrilled when she agreed to fill The Goat’s Lunch Pail. The goat’s happy, too.
So, without further ado, here she is:
Having been kindly asked to contribute to Leah’s blog has caused the Bag Lady all kinds of consternation. What to say? The Bag Lady knows nothing of writing or hypnosis and doesn’t even know what metaphysics means. She does, however, have a dog, and is well aware of what it won’t eat (she is all too aware of what it WILL eat, too, but promises not to share that with you!) So here goes.
The Bag Lady was recently invited to a baby shower for one of the neighbours. She is not particularly close to this new mother, but doesn’t have much of a social life, so she went.
Now, for most of her adult life, any time the Bag Lady’s friends and acquaintances have given birth, she has made them a baby quilt. The Bag Lady loves to sew, and has always felt that a home-made gift was a sign that some thought and effort went into said gift. Also some expense, as anyone who sews on a regular basis knows!
This particular neighbour and, in fact, most of the other guests, are somewhat younger than the Bag Lady, but only by 10 or 15 years (not much, says the Bag Lady) putting them in their late 20s, early 30s.
So when the new mother opened the Bag Lady’s gift, the Bag Lady was hoping for much oohing and awing, as this particular quilt is what is called a bubble quilt, which involves an incredible amount of work, and a lot of time. In fact, the Bag Lady (having not much of a social life and a lot of time on her hands) sewed most of it by hand with a needle and thread as opposed to using a sewing machine. She also personalized the quilt with the child’s initials.
So imagine her disappointment when the new mother’s response was rather tepid. She asked the Bag Lady if the quilt was made from a kit…
Needless to say, the Bag Lady, loath to explain the amount of time and effort that went into the quilt, briefly explained that, no, it was all hand-made – each square was cut out, sewn together, stuffed, then sewn together with the other squares.
The Bag Lady doesn’t want any misunderstandings here; she is only bringing this subject up because she wonders if the new mother’s response was a result of her personal feelings for the Bag Lady, or if she is truly ignorant about sewing.
Doesn’t anyone sew anymore? Is a homemade gift to be denigrated? Do all new mothers want “store-bought” for their children? Is a mass-produced toy or an outfit that every other child is wearing more desirable than a one-of-a-kind, personalized gift? Or is the Bag Lady just lonely, petty, and out of touch with the real world?
So, without further ado, here she is:
Having been kindly asked to contribute to Leah’s blog has caused the Bag Lady all kinds of consternation. What to say? The Bag Lady knows nothing of writing or hypnosis and doesn’t even know what metaphysics means. She does, however, have a dog, and is well aware of what it won’t eat (she is all too aware of what it WILL eat, too, but promises not to share that with you!) So here goes.
The Bag Lady was recently invited to a baby shower for one of the neighbours. She is not particularly close to this new mother, but doesn’t have much of a social life, so she went.
Now, for most of her adult life, any time the Bag Lady’s friends and acquaintances have given birth, she has made them a baby quilt. The Bag Lady loves to sew, and has always felt that a home-made gift was a sign that some thought and effort went into said gift. Also some expense, as anyone who sews on a regular basis knows!
This particular neighbour and, in fact, most of the other guests, are somewhat younger than the Bag Lady, but only by 10 or 15 years (not much, says the Bag Lady) putting them in their late 20s, early 30s.
So when the new mother opened the Bag Lady’s gift, the Bag Lady was hoping for much oohing and awing, as this particular quilt is what is called a bubble quilt, which involves an incredible amount of work, and a lot of time. In fact, the Bag Lady (having not much of a social life and a lot of time on her hands) sewed most of it by hand with a needle and thread as opposed to using a sewing machine. She also personalized the quilt with the child’s initials.
So imagine her disappointment when the new mother’s response was rather tepid. She asked the Bag Lady if the quilt was made from a kit…
Needless to say, the Bag Lady, loath to explain the amount of time and effort that went into the quilt, briefly explained that, no, it was all hand-made – each square was cut out, sewn together, stuffed, then sewn together with the other squares.
The Bag Lady doesn’t want any misunderstandings here; she is only bringing this subject up because she wonders if the new mother’s response was a result of her personal feelings for the Bag Lady, or if she is truly ignorant about sewing.
Doesn’t anyone sew anymore? Is a homemade gift to be denigrated? Do all new mothers want “store-bought” for their children? Is a mass-produced toy or an outfit that every other child is wearing more desirable than a one-of-a-kind, personalized gift? Or is the Bag Lady just lonely, petty, and out of touch with the real world?
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