Last weekend for Father’s Day, we took our kids to a concert at Ravinia Festival. If you grew up in Chicago, especially the north side, you may have visited this unique Chicago venue. Just walking in makes me feel happy.
I received a pretty cool email the other day. The subject line was: Your childhood in an email. Read More
Today is Eva Marie’s day to post on the boomer blog. But she’s having a tad bit ‘o trouble logging in to our blog. So, I figured I’d give it a shot. Voila! Here I am! Okay, shame on me, did that sound rather smug? Sorry…truth is I have trouble all the time logging in to various places online. In fact, I am about up to my eyeballs concerning passwords, user i.d.’s, login codes and such. I want to run away from home, or at least from anywhere with online access. Anyone else going a tad crazy over all of the Internet options for communicating? Any suggestions for keeping track of everything…for being able to prioritize? Would love to hear what other Boomer Babes are doing to stay sane. 
Boomeritis is a term I learned several years ago while reading an article about baby boomers. Since our generation ushered in the exercise craze, it should have been no surprise to learn that boomers were getting arthritis, tendonitis, bursitis, and many other “itis” type conditions.
According to www.medterms.com the proper definition is as follows:
Boomeritis: Injuries to older amateur athletes, especially those who are part of the Baby Boom, born when there was a marked rise in the birthrate following the end of World War II in 1945. As the Baby Boom generation began to turn 40 and 50, there was a veritable explosion of bone and joint aches, pains, injuries, and ailments — boomeritis. The term was coined by Dr. Nicholas A DiNubile, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, in 1999.
I got a kick out of this the first time I read about it. I chuckled to myself and thought, it takes our generation to come up with another new word. At that time, I couldn’t relate. Several years later, I have a different perspective.
Next, I was reading another article which poked fun at boomers who are weekend warriors. They do nothing physical all week, then they put things in high gear on the weekends by biking too many miles or horseback riding for long hours leaving them stiff and sore on Monday.
Again, I chuckled. But then it dawned on me. These articles were speaking of me. Could that be? I remembered how I tore my ACL while playing tennis with my son one weekend. He was 18 at the time and I was, well a boomer. I’d hit a bit of tennis that summer, walked five days a week, but was in no shape to take my racket and go all out playing like I was a kid again.
The first half hour felt great. I was going strong and felt as if I could almost keep up with him. Then I turned to run and hit a backhand, and down I went. I knew what I’d done because I’d torn the other ACL years back while playing soccer with the kids. Will this old gal ever learn? It seems I’m in good company. According to an article written by Bill Pennington and published in the New York Times, sports-related injuries to baby boomers rose 33 percent between 1991 and 1998.
Since there are many other boomers facing boomeritis, I’ was just wondering if any of you cold relate?
Mom is finally getting stronger. A bout with double pneumonia and renal failure nearly gave my mom the old one-two. But she’s a fighter and her smile is back, and she’s walking and swimming three times a week now.
But she’s a little lonely, having to stay indoors more than out, as her lungs recuperate.
I drove to her home last weekend and spent the afternoon with her. And she told me that she had one regret: she misses her grandchildren. Some are in Colorado. Others are grown and newly married and in transition.
What’s a grandma to do? she asked.
I told her about the social network, first popular among college students. I explained how all of her grandchildren had a facebook (as do her daughters and one son and her son-in-law). I took her to my Facebook page and showed her how I could connect with any of them in a heartbeat, and she was excited when I took her to Mitch’s page (my nephew, her grandson) and showed her the proposal pictures from last weekend.
Yes, another wedding. : )
Mom is great on the computer. She beats herself up sometime, thinking she should know more, failing to realize that most 70 year-olds aren’t e-mailing, transferring pictures, faxing, and even designing a cabin. She has done all of that.
Within moments, I had her signed up on Facebook. I was delighted when I went to her page earlier today and saw that 9 of the 11 grandchildren were already leaving messages on her wall.
“Hey, Mee Maw!”
“OMG, Mee Maw. You’re on Facebook. How cool is that?”
“Mee Maw! Look at you!”
And so on.
It was a small thing, connecting her to the cyberworld of her grandchildren. But it’s so fun to watch her run with it.
She’s one strong, smart lady–my mom. And now she’s the Facebook Mee Maw, and there’s no stopping her. Watch out, Facebook world!
Hey, come see me at Facebook. To connect with me on Facebook, go to http://facebook.com and key in the ID “Suzanne Eller”. To connect with the Facebook Mee Maw, key in the ID “Karen Morrison” and let her know I sent you.
So this summer, as often is the case, I am writing a book. I must fight temptations of my garden, the tennis court, even the local public swimming pool (where I would take the kids to play while I lounge in a wide-brimmed hat with a novel).
And even though this book is not yet completed, I’ve begun some marketing efforts for the book I wrote last summer and fall—which will release at the end of this year (the publishing process is rather drawn out). Next week I’ll be at my publisher’s sales conference, where I get to speak to the sales force about the book—an amazing (and intimidating) opportunity. I’ll receive the final edits on the book while I’m there, which I have to look over and approve by July 9.
All the while, I have to finish the current work-in-progress by September 1, and an in-depth magazine article by about the same time.
While I was writing this post, a fellow writer called to ask if I would read a book manuscript to possibly write an endorsement. And here’s the crazy thing—I really wanted to say yes.
But to do so would be to sacrifice my sanity. And the quality of my other work. You cannot give your best to an unlimited number of projects. So I said, no, not this time. My plate is too full.
So one of my summer jobs is to write. Another is to say “no” when I need to so that my life doesn’t get out of control. How do you balance work and play in the summer? How do you know what to say yes and no to?
Summer can be a time when things actually do settle down—or not. We get sucked into the trap of thinking summer is endless and put off what we really want to do. We see wide open days and rush to fill them, rather than relish them.
Try to keep summer as slow as you can. How? Choose very carefully what you say yes and no to. If someone asks you to do something you don’t want to do, and your only plans are to putter in the garden, simply say, “I’m sorry, I have plans.” The more you say no to busyness, the more leisurely your summer will be. That’s hardly a profound statement—if you’re not busy, you’ll be leisurely. But how many of us can actually do the hard work of saying no?
Don’t sign your kids up for too much, if you can help it. If they are old enough to work at a job like babysitting or lawn-mowing, have them do that.
And also, explore the spiritual discipline of solitude.
With the kids home from school, solitude is harder to find. But not impossible.
Allison Bottke is the founder of Boomer Babes Rock, God Allows U-Turns, and the International SANITY Support Group Network. She is the author or editor of more than 23 non-fiction and fiction books. Her column for boomer women appears monthly in Christian Women Online (CWO).
