The High Tech Way

Middle Age and Its Discontents

An old friend from high school died last week. We weren't best buddies, but we sat at the same lunch table, laughed together, and she set me up on a date with her brother once. She was beautiful, fun, funny, silly. All the good things. When the call went out for short stories about her, I had none. Just a general impression of enjoying her company very much and wishing we'd stayed in touch. Some things about her life have been similar to mine. The late in life motherhood, for example. She leaves behind a 4 year old daughter which means she had that baby when she was 41 or 42.

She had a stroke a bit over a year ago. A minor one and then a major one. They left her debilitated and headed for rehabilitation. And then they found the cause of the strokes was clots thrown off by stage 4 lung cancer. She'd never smoked. (My yoga teacher tells me it's a minority of lung cancer victims who smoke.)

So there she is, an invalid, rehabilitating from a stroke and then undergoing chemo and radiation.

Her brother, (the one I dated) through all this, is hopeful. Looking for her to get better. And really, who wouldn't? She had everything to live for. Had given up the successful corporate career to run a flower shop downtown. By her side every day was her young daughter.

As we get older, more people our age will be dying. From one friend every 10 years to one every 5 years. One day it will stop being a shock. We will start reading the obituary page every morning to look for our friends (or whatever passes for the obituary page when newspapers also die soon).

As we age, the world around us will become less familiar. The music we liked in youth becomes oldies or classics. The sounds on “the radio” or whatever it is then sounds like noise. The ones of us who seem to maintain our youth are those who keep up with youth culture, not the familiar songs of our friends from high school and college.

In 100 years everyone we know will be gone. The music we listened to will likely not be listened to by anyone living anymore.

I think, for someone who lives to be 100 years old, that life becomes less appealing. The friends you knew are gone. The people who understand the things that got you so excited about life are gone. No one gets into your music. No one remembers how hot Brad Pitt was in Thelma and Louise. So you are more alone, even when you are with other people. The world becomes less fun.

I don't want anyone I know to die. I don't want to die myself. But in this middle age where I am I have a growing realization that there will be a time when I will know more people who were gone than people who are alive. This is when you'd miss talking to people who GOT where you were from – the inside jokes, the cultural references, that made you feel like you belonged where you were.  When you got to this place in time, I think it would start to feel like dying was OK. Like you were going home.

Why the bitterness? The growing rift between left and right

It has occurred to me that as a somewhat left-of-center person politically, I don't really understand the opposition to universal healthcare. This occurred to me because I was reading Cecily's blog and then a different view -- one opposed to the current healthcare reform bill -- written by the author of a comment at Cecily's blog at her own blog. This writer, Elena, agrees that healthcare is in need of reform, but disagrees about what has to happen to do that (tort reform and interstate competition -- which have been the standard Republican-suggested solutions to the current crisis.) I don't really know how those changes will fix the problems that the uninsured are facing, or that those with pre-existing conditions are facing.

But I digress. What I really want to talk about is the growing heated bitterness between the partisan sides in this debate and other debates recently.  I don't know about why people oppose healthcare reform because I don't watch any of the news programs they watch, I don't read any of the blogs they read, I don't spend time in online communities that discuss their points of view about it. Really, it just annoys me to do so, so I stay away.

It used to be, once upon a time, that I would watch the evening news on one of the three broadcast channels, and it would carry bit-picture stories that sought to explain the different sides of an issue. My neighbors would watch that same show, as would people of different political persuasions. I don't watch those anymore. It used to be that I would regularly read a daily newspaper, delivered to my doorstep, that would offer a broad array of news coverage. As would my neighbors, both Republican and Democrat. I don't read those anymore (with any regularity).

Now I look at my Twitter feed, made up of comments from people who I mostly agree with. And I read news sites like the Huffington Post which lean to the left. (Although I also read the Economist and the Wall Street Journal.)  My online friends who I have selected are other left-leaning folks. I spend more time talking to them than I do talking to the people at my local post office, which I never visit or at the grocery story.

I've created a community of people and news sources that validate the things I believe. And the people who disagree with me have done the same. We each come from a mind-frame that we believe to be absolutely correct and we feel sorry for people who are so limited that they cannot see our truths.

This is maybe the way we've always been -- hanging out with people who agree with us. But the Internet has amplified the effect.  If we talk louder and if we are more adamant in our views, then those other people will understand how wrong they've been all along. Or maybe if we reason with them.

But they are coming from a different truth, and they never get to see ours (like we used to when we all watched the same news program or read the same newspaper) unless we are all fighting. Elena, in her blog, talks about the Catechism and how she interprets its guidance regarding providing healthcare to everyone. That is not something that ever would have occurred to me. It would seem irrelevant to me. But there are things that would absolutely guide me in my interpretation of the merits of healthcare that she would find equally irrelevant to the whole thing, I'm sure.

I'm worried. I'm worried that this chasm between us has grown and will continue to grow.

Adieu breastpump number 1

I've just sent off one of my breastpumps (yes I have multiple breastpumps) to a place where it can be useful again.

My boobs have reverted to their decorative and entertainment functionality only. (Even more so since the babies added two cup sizes to my wee little girls -- A to C -- most of which I seem to be keeping.

What I accomplished in 2009

I typed the title to this and now here I am sitting and staring at a blank screen.

Which is appropriate because that's how this year has felt.

I've felt unmotivated and worn down. Every time I felt like I got a little edge and was getting somewhere, it evaporated. Case in point: David's pay cut. Case in point: my unpaid job furlough. Those are the ones I'm comfortable talking about here, but rest assured, there are more.

But there has actually been a little progress. For example,

• I lost weight on a low-carb diet (still a ways to go, but nearly halfway there. Took a break and gained a little back over these holidays.)
• Started going back to yoga classes again.
• Found that I had time for reading for pleasure again, and am doing so. (i.e. I don't pass out 30 seconds after I climb into bed.)
• Moved into the new living room. Yesterday. David did all of the work and I tried to keep the preschoolers out of his hair as he worked on it.

I have a tendency to feel unorganized, declare that will get organized and then make a list longer than Santa's of things that I need to do, goals I should have, intermediate steps to get there, etc. Not surprisingly, I find this overwhelming and soon abandon it all. I can MAKE myself unmotivated and worn down in this way. But no more.

Resolution for 2010: Simplify.

Enough already with organizing. Now I'm eliminating instead.

Christmastime religious/philosophical question influenced by IVF

Back at the time the New Testament was written there wasn't all this scientific knowledge about the human reproductive system.

But now that there is, it raises a question for me regarding the immaculate conception. 

Was Christ half human and half God -- i.e. half the genetic information provided by the Holy Spirit and half by the human mother Mary?

Or did the Holy Spirit transfer a complete God-conceived embryo to human surrogate Mary?

Falling in love again

It is Christmas day, and I am reading the newspaper again. Although my career has been in journalism (albeit B2B journalism [business to business] which many consumer newspaper people don't consider ACTUAL journalism) I stopped getting a daily newspaper maybe four or five years ago. I have been reluctant to admit that fact to friends who are reporters and editors at daily newspapers, especially as most of us have found our careers in jeopardy in recent years.

The publishing business is in trouble as the disruptive force of Internet publishing has taken away its power. Anyone can be an online publisher today. Google gets a majority of advertising revenues these days while newspapers, saddled in debt, are watching their revenues decline as newbie online publications such as the Huffington Post and even bloggers eat their lunch. These newcomers are not encumbered by debt, old expectations, and muscle memory of how the business has been run and how it has performed for the last 50 years.

But I digress.

That's not why I stopped getting a daily paper delivered to me. I stopped because it felt as if the Internet had given me attention deficit disorder (ADD). I'd started telecommuting and I'd sit down at my computer before I'd changed out of my pajamas. I didn't get up for hours and hours. The newspapers that I used to read as I drank my coffee before I ever powered up the PC began to pile up unread, unloved. I missed them, but I felt as though I didn't have time for them anymore. Really they were being crowded out by reading so many things online. I canceled my subscription to the local paper. Back then it was the San Jose Mercury News (then a Knight Ridder paper).

Once my first baby finally arrived, the thought of ever reading the paper again evaporated. I remember my mother came to visit in the weeks after Jack was born and I renewed my subscription to the paper for the time she was staying with us. But I canceled it again when she left because I wasn't reading it. It was too difficult to rattle the big newspaper pages into position for the story I wanted to read when I was also holding an infant and using a breast pump. 

After we moved back to the Philadelphia area nearly three years ago I tried again, subscribing to the Philadelphia Inquirer. But again they piled up, so I let the subscription lapse. We switched to Sunday only. But even that was too much.  A few times in the last year I picked up a Sunday paper at the supermarket, hoping that I would get to read it but thinking that even if I never did at least there were the coupons. But I couldn't even make time for that. It seemed like yet another task to overwhelm me amidst my full-time career, having two preschoolers and remodeling our recently purchased house. 

And yet tonight I found myself flipping through the paper and falling in love with it again. And there is my dear friend's byline. And here is another interesting story. Look at this turn of a phrase here, and here is some local news I didn't know about. And how lovely it is to read it on the couch after dinner as they boys watch Nick Jr. for a half hour before bath time.

But the difference tonight is that I am reading it on a Kindle, the eReader from Amazon.com. I don't know why, but it feels easier to me and accessible in a way that the paper newspaper does not anymore. It feels less wasteful to me in an age when printing ink on paper for something that is disposed of in a week's time seems frightful. It pleases me that the "newspaper" is quickly downloaded onto the Kindle. It is the newspaper I used to know and love only better.  And suddenly I feel like I see that there is a future for "newspapers" or whatever they will be called in the future. Here is hope.

What is disappointing is the news stories over the last year or so about the business model Amazon is looking to force onto newspapers, whereby Amazon gets 70 percent of revenues and newspapers get 30 percent. That's pretty extreme folks. Who is doing all the work here?

But I LOVE the delivery model. I love the reading experience on the Kindle. I love that any word I don't know or public figure who I'm not familiar with can be explained to me by a dictionary or encyclopedia entry on the spot and all I have to do is put the curser on that word.

This is the future of publishing, I am certain, after just one day with my new Kindle. It's everything it used to be and more. And better.

Sure, there will still be collectors editions of printed books for authors to sign, but they will be like the vinyl records in stores today -- collectors items not designed as the primary method for mass consumption of content.

(Yes, through some very thoughtful work, David was able to get me a Kindle for Christmas without exceeding our austere price limit on gifts this year. (He got some people to go in together). )

I wanted one very much, and I thought they were cool. But the experience has exceeded what I was expecting. I'm sold on this new format. Now I hope that all the issues with different formats (standards, vs. Kindle format, vs. whatever else) can ultimately be resolved. Because this shit is awesome.

"Infrastructure will collapse. Voltage spikes." But the news and journalism and great writing will survive! Yes it will!

I know it's wrong to love a pile of semiconductors, but I do love my new Kindle . Yes I do.

The Man, 1. Me, 0.

Everybody is complaining about money, or lack thereof, these days. I am no exception.

Tonight we got the notice of the tuition increase at daycare of 6 percent. Which would be OK if either of us had gotten a raise of any kind in the last three years. Instead, David got a 15 percent pay cut last January and I got an unpaid furlough every other Friday over the summer. For the two years before that our salaries remained the same.

I've found myself looking forward to Kindergarten. One of the reasons we moved to this house in this neighborhood was because it's so close to a good elementary school -- about 50 yards down the road, across the street, there is a path that leads to the schoolyard. And it's a good public school, which means we are already paying for it with our taxes. No more $$$ required.

Jack will be ready for Kindergarten in September. Must. Survive. Til. Then.

Meanwhile, as I often do, I find myself thinking about alternate scenarios. What if we stole away one of the teachers from the school to be our nanny? OK, well, we couldn't afford that either. What if we shared her with another family in our 'hood? Then we could pay her pretty well and she'd still have less kids then she does at the school.

I think about these things, and then I get overwhelmed and am paralyzed.

Which reminds me of my new year's resolution for 2010 that I started early: Simplify.

I'm not gonna think about it tonight.

I am a breast pump aficionado

You might call me a breast pump aficionado.

I have two good Medela Pump in Style pumps -- a shoulder bag one that I got used on eBay and a back pack one that a friend gave me after she was finished with it.

I have another manual pump that I bought for emergencies and used for traveling after I stopped regular pumping but was still breastfeeding.

And I have another double electric pump that's ok, but it's no Medela PIS. I tried it once, but it just wasn't effective enough.

And then I once had a Whisperwear pump, but I sold it. Just not up to snuff for exclusive pumping, which is what I was doing when I bought it. I felt like I had to use the Medela to finish after I used the Whisperwear in order to get really empty.

Yeah, and so I have owned some breast pumps.

I haven't used any them since July 2008.

But they used to be a fixture in my life. They traveled with me everywhere. They were my ever-present companion. They became a badge of pride.

I gradually became more brazen about using them in public. I went from hiding away at home to pumping in an airport lounge, in my seat in an airplane, and in my seat on a packed Amtrak train from Philadelphia to New York (when I was so full I felt like the milk was gonna come out of my eyes). I pumped in my boss's office. I pumped in my boss's boss's office. And I asked the president of my division of the company I work for, whom I'd never met before, where I could go to use my pump. 

So this month is the end of an era. I'm giving one of my really good pumps to a friend and former colleague whose baby is due in February. I will be shipping the pump to her this month. And it feels good to know it will be going to a good home.

Cows with names produce more milk

This is so cool from the list of big ideas in the NYTimes mag this year: Cows with names produce more milk than cows that haven't been named by their humans.

Now, as the article says, there may be other factors involved. Maybe the named cows are treated better, for example. But either way it kinda shows that lactating creatures who are treated better will be better producers.

That reminds me of the Milk episode of Modern Marvels that I saw a year or more ago, and I don't know if I wrote about it back then, but one of the things they said during the program was that the milk cows are given the best food and treatment because it's been found to help their production.

And I think about how we breastfeeding human moms run ourselves ragged. We get so little sleep. If we go back to work then we are especially burning the candle at both ends. Not to mention how hard the exclusively pumping moms are working. It's not easy. But we do it anyway because we know it's important.

If this is you, be nice to yourself. And realizing you are worth being treated well and making sure that you are treated that way just may help you produce more, too.

Christmas for broke people

Well, we aren't broke. We are rich compared to so many people around the world who worry about whether they are going to eat and where they are going to sleep. But, like most people, it hasn't been a banner year financially in our household either. There has been a 15 percent pay cut for one of us and then a series of unpaid furloughs for the other one. Meanwhile, nobody was reducing their prices for anything we needed to buy.  Budgets have been painfully tight.

It's happened everywhere this year. I don't think I know anyone who hasn't had someone in their household affected by the recession in some way or another. My brother is working four day weeks and his girlfriend was laid off. My cousin is having problems finding a new job after moving back to this town. And so on.

This year we have implemented a $5 limit on gifts for extended family (or something handmade or something regifted). And there hasn't been a year in recent memory when I've been as excited and happy about Christmas. It's like a huge weight has been lifted -- the feeling that I have to find the perfect Christmas gift for everyone or else spend more than I should.

Today I thought of another awesome Christmas gift exchange -- one with my friends back in college. No one had any money, so we decided that we would just exchange cards and write in the cards what we would get for the recipient if we could get them anything in the world. It was so freeing, it let us be so creative, and it truly proved that it was the thought that counts.

I only remember two of the gifts I received during that celebration -- 51 percent of M&M Mars Company and Sting (the musician.)  But it was so much fun.