Want To Know About The Other Sex? Pick Up Their Magazines

A typical cover for Men's
Health

It started out innocuously enough.  I had purchased a subscription to Men's Health magazine for my husband as he was working out regularly and I thought he might enjoy it. He barely glanced at it. This was back in the day when you actually bought physical magazines and had them delivered to your house.  My ingrained thriftiness wouldn't allow me to let the magazine go unread every month, I would get my money's worth out of it, so I picked it up and started to read. Since I worked out at the gym twice a week I thought that the information the magazine was giving out might just as well pertain to me.
My world at the time was very estrogen heavy, filled with other stay-at-home moms raising their kids. While it was comforting to share what I was experiencing with my female friends who were doing the same thing it could get a bit.... boring. And then along came Men's Health magazine. Bam! I was hooked. Opening the cover was opening the door to another world. A testosterone filled one. The writing was sharp and punchy, even aggressive. A "kick in the pants" style telling men to get off the couch, work out, cook something healthy, dress better, do some personal grooming and how they could please a woman in bed.  They were speaking my language.

I had had enough of women's magazines showing me how to stay young and sexy to delight my husband while raising brilliant children in an impeccable home. I was more than ready for another point of view.  Raising two boys and married to a man, this stuff was relevant for me. Soon I was picking up GC and Esquire to round out the picture and everyone just assumed my husband was the one who read them. The inner workings of the male body, and the male mind, why wouldn't this appeal? The writing was so good, funny and direct. Interviews with well known athletes, movie stars, politicians, and writers; coverage of scandals and crimes; medical breakthroughs and great nutritional advice, fashion and grooming ...it was all there, but with a male slant. Written by men for men. I became a better gift giver for the men in my life, got styling tips on keeping my husband well-dressed and I found out what was a turn off and turn on for men sexually, at least according to the magazines. I learnt about making classic cocktails, how to get six pack abs and that vexing question of whether to match your sock colour to your shoe or pant (answer:pant).  And the pictures! What's not to like about well-muscled, handsome men in spandex doing push ups? Or one wearing a $3000 suit, glancing at a $10,000 watch.

It was reassuring to see that the media was pushing a physical ideal on men that was just as out of reach for most of the population as the one that the women's magazines were pushing on me. I knew these male models were clocking many hours in the gym every week and living off of chicken breasts and celery sticks to maintain their 42 inch chests and 29 inch waists. I appreciated every ounce of their effort. And, I could follow their work out regime as published in the magazine to try and attain those abs for myself! What's not to love?

Eye candy aside it was the topics and the writing that kept me reading. Advances in prostate cancer research, new information on cardiac health, how men feel about their father and being a father. It was all great stuff and not what was being discussed with the moms at the school playground. It was truly an alternate universe for me that helped me to better care for and understand my husband and sons in ways that Good Housekeeping or Vogue could not.
Eventually though the bloom came off the rose. Just as with other magazines the stories became repetitive. There are only so many ways to pump up a bicep or make a steak salad or groom your facial hair. The subscription got canceled and I now only rarely look at Esquire on my iPad but I have nothing but fond memories of my journey through the world of men's publishing. I like to think it gave my little universe a bit of balance at a time when I felt I was drowning in ways to decorate my table for Easter.  Perhaps in this outraged #metoo world it might do men some good to pick up a few magazines aimed at women and give them a read. You never know what understanding may lay beyond that door.

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Yup, It's November Again

It's relentless outside as I write this, a constant deluge of rain, clouds have descended into the tree tops and the sound of life outside is drowned out by the rush of water all around me. My apartment has many windows and skylights and the effect today is one of living in a glass globe placed under a waterfall. Cascading is the only word that comes to mind.

I had been searching for some blogging inspiration by going through my previous posts, looking at things I had started and not finished and there it was - a post about November, started last November  the 23rd. Today is the 21st of the month and my mood is the same as it was then. Dark and damp. And the forecast for the next seven days is less daylight, more rain. The Vancouver Sun today tells me that the rainfall to date this month is 63 mm or 2.48 inches more than the normal totals. It has been raining a lot.

My father hated November and after he retired, he and my mom often planned a holiday somewhere warmer and drier for this month. I didn't understand it then.  November for me was just a break between a gorgeous, golden leaf-filled October and Christmas, a time to start gift

shopping and enjoying the new tv season. What was the problem?  February had always been my problem month. Cold, bleak and devoid of highlights except for the manufactured silliness of Valentine's Day. But now, I am starting to see my dad's point of view. November sucks.

Is November weather getting worse or is it just me?  I have always been sensitive to the cold, that is nothing new so my home is warm and I keep wool cardigans and throws handy and sheepskin slippers on my feet. The hall closet is filled, almost embarrassingly so with down coats, scarves, gloves and boots. I am prepared for the outdoors.

I just don't want to go out there. I suffer from SAD, Seasonal Affected Disorder, but I'm venturing a guess that most of us that live here feel a touch of the winter blues. For me it manifests as a desire to drink coffee and/or wine, eat carbs and chocolate and stay in bed as long as I can in the morning. My brain turns foggy and my memory is poor. At the end of the day I can't remember what I was supposed to have accomplished with the previous hours. Whatever it was probably didn't get done if it wasn't written down. I use a light therapy box in the mornings and force myself to get outside as much as I can as even a grey day offers some benefit to those suffering from SAD.  Some days it doesn't seem important enough to bundle up and brave it though, I'd rather eat another cookie and find things to do inside. I don't suffer enough to require medication I just need November to pass. It appears it's not the weather getting worse that is the problem.

December never seems to be quite as bad as November, it usually doesn't rain as much. Then, as the winter miracle approaches on December 21st, that being the solstice, not the birth of Christ, my spirit lifts every so slightly. The days start getting longer, praise the lord!  There are also the distractions of Christmas and New Year's Eve to make the days sparkle a bit as opposed to the solemness of Remembrance Day that November holds. November could be enjoyed as the start of ski season, the play-off time for football, the NHL gets into gear, and the Black Friday sales are coming ....but not for me. Here on the great wet coast of BC it's dark, it's damp and I'm pulling the blankets over my head and making cookie crumbs in the bed. Wake me up December 22nd.

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Can a Taste for Opera Be Developed?

I love the Sydney Opera House,
Does that count?

Opera. Does anyone really like it or is it like eating tripe or brains? You are supposed to like it if you have more refined and adventurous tastes than average but in actuality its a tough slog for everyone.  Are people just forcing themselves to like it? Fake it till you make it?  I have heard it brings people to tears and transports them to a higher realm of being but I just don't get it. I mean no disrespect to the people that perform it, they spend a lifetime honing their skills, and full disclosure, I am pretty much tone deaf. I cannot sing on key at all, nor can I hum a melody to a song that anyone would recognize. How I ended up with two musically inclined children is all due to my husband's genes.

When I was twenty I had a boyfriend who had been raised in Europe on classical music and he loved it. He listened to it in the car and at home, watched classical concerts and opera on tv. He loved it like I loved the Eagles or Stevie Wonder so I was exposed to it all the time. My upbringing was filled with radio pop and the hard rock of my older brother's records but I was willing to try and appreciate classical music since my boyfriend seemed so taken with it but after a while the minute he left the apartment or the car, the radio station got changed.  I tried, I really did. I grew in knowledge to be able to tell the difference between the violin playing of Itzhak Perlman and Yehudi Menuhin but I could not savour the experience like he did. When the relationship ended so did my exposure to classical music for the most part, other than the occasional bit I got through movies or being put on hold on the phone.  I tried again years later when my son got interested in classical music and was given an array of CD's for presents. I would slip some Mozart into rotation on my cd changer in the car and give it a go but invariably it ended up creeping me out or boring me so I gave up. Just being honest here.

A physiotherapist who treated me about ten years ago was always regaling me with his love for opera and I felt like an ignorant dummy for saying I wasn't interested in it without ever actually having been to an opera. So I made a decision that I was allowed to dislike something...like tripe, as long as I had tried it with an open mind.  I bought tickets to the Vancouver Opera performance of Carmen, something with recognizable music, not obscure and demanding, and went with the intention to have my mind blown and my tastes changed. This was the real thing, albeit not the Metropolitan Opera or anything of that calibre but it was live and these were professionals. The lights went down, the performance began and my eyes started ping ponging back and forth from the video translation rolling by far above the singers heads and the actual action on the stage.  It was amazing how hard it was to read and follow the story while trying to listen to the singing and appreciate it. Finally I just ignored the translation and let the action and music roll over me. Easier but like watching a foreign film without the subtitles, sometimes I could understand what was going on and other times there was a barrier that I couldn't climb over, nothing made sense. It was slow...and long.

The first time I tasted a sushi tuna roll I didn't like it but I grew to like it very much over time so I figured I had better give opera another chance. A good friend of mine offered to go with me as she had the same curiosity about it as I did so we bought tickets to The Marriage of Figaro.

The wonderful poster by
Edel Rodriguez of
The Marriage of Figaro

A little more lighthearted than Carmen.  Our big mistake was to indulge in a nice meal and a glass of wine before hand. Maybe two glasses of wine. The lights went down, the music commenced and within an hour our eyelids were drooping and our heads were nodding. Opera is long! Despite all the shenanigans on stage and the playfulness of the story we could not keep our eyes open. We stuck it through to the end and exited the theatre shamed by our infantile inability to appreciate "culture".

I have made peace with my lack of enthusiasm for classical music and opera. The door to the magical room where classical music feeds the soul is closed to me and that's okay, let others enjoy it.  The constant struggle the Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Symphony have with keeping up ticket sales tells me I am not alone. Try to get an overpriced ticket to an Elton John or a Rolling Stones concert and you will see where my generation is spending their entertainment dollars. Opera has been crossed off my list. Now, does anyone know a place that serves good tripe?

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Longing for a No Fly Zone

You know the way salmon always return to the same stream where they were born and fight their way

back up it to spawn and die? Well, instead of salmon think of flies and instead of a fresh, rushing stream think of my apartment.  I am living in the midst of a mass return and die off of flies. It is as gross as it sounds.
When we came to view the apartment as a possible rental for us in January there were dead flies everywhere, hanging from fly strips, on the floors and windowsills, behind closed blinds on the skylights. Many, many flies. The apartment had been empty for a while and my first thought was that perhaps the previous tenants had died in the apartment and their bodies had not been discovered for days. Hey, it happens, but I think the rental manager has to disclose that. She wasn't offering up any tales of dead bodies so I chose not to bring it up but a couple of  small but highly suspicious stains on the bedroom carpet kept the thought firmly in my mind. Trying to see through the fly issue, we agreed to rent the apartment as long as the management cleaned up the flies and checked for any sources such as dead rodents and the like.  An exterminator came and gave the space a thumbs up, no rodents, no human corpses in the walls and so the cleaners came in and did their job. There was a bit of an ongoing dead fly clean up after moving in but I dealt with it, having been assured it was a one time thing.

Fall has now  arrived and with it a wave of dopey, slow moving flies. They fly around the windows outside, banging and banging into the glass or just crawl slowly across the panes. Up to four at a time get trapped between the screens and the closed windows, seemingly desperate to get inside. I avoid opening those windows. They find their way in from who knows where and buzz in the corners of windows searching for a way out. I have killed a dozen and vacuumed up double that amount and that's just this week. Twice a fly has bombed into my head as I sat reading. It's as if they are on their last legs, having lost all sense of direction or ability to manoeuvre. They just seem to know they need to be back in our apartment... to die. There is a particular corner of the living room that seems to be the final rest stop and requires my constant vigilance to keep the bodies from piling up. I keep several fly swatters around the apartment and the insides of the windows are smeared with the aftermath of my attacks. It is a particular type of torment, walking into a room to do something and having that sound, that intermittent buzz and tap of a big, fat fly noodling around a window frame, assault me.  It doesn't last long when I have a swatter in hand.

Making a mountain out of a molehill, you say? Perhaps, but I have lived in many different homes, some of which did have dead animal carcasses under the porch or in the crawlspace and I have never experienced a fly-festation as this. The common house fly is known as a filth fly (think about THAT) and "depending on species, they may seek moist, dark piles of trash, rotting carcasses or manure in which to lay their eggs." That comes straight off the Orkin.com pest control website and does NOT instill a sense of total confidence in me that I do not not have rotting corpses, human or animal in my walls. Or manure. My house is clean, there are no teenagers leaving food to rot under the bed. No compost bucket left to moulder on the counter, I'm pretty tidy. So all I can do now is stand ready, swatter and vacuum poised, to break the cycle of life for the fly kingdom which has decided to come back home, and let them know who lives here now....and hope that the previous tenants really did move out.

Are You A Working Girl?

"Are you a working girl?" he asked. I looked up from staring into a storefront window and took a moment to process the question. A middle aged man, dressed in the blue shirt and pants associated with a "blue collar" worker was looking at me inquiringly. "Are you a working girl?" he repeated quietly. I was killing time on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver while waiting for the BC Hydro office, in it's mosaic tiled building on Nelson and Burrard, to open. It was the first day of my first real full-time, grown up job and I had allowed too  much time to get from my family's home in Richmond by bus. I was due at the office at 8:00 AM and it was only 7:30 so I had decided to walk a few blocks in the beautiful morning sunshine.

This looks like a working girl!

It was 1974 and a perfect September day in Vancouver, like we are experiencing now,  a bright blue sky, a fresh crispness to the air after the summer's heat with the warmth of the sun slowly drying up the morning dew. I was preoccupied with my thoughts of the day ahead. I had never had a job other than babysitting or cutting hair or doing alterations for friends and family. Casual stuff of a teenager's life. Three months earlier I had graduated high school and turned seventeen but wanted my last summer of freedom before I started looking for full time work.  When I was ready a mother of a friend of a friend had gotten me the job as a favour and it was quite a big deal. It was hard to find work in a sea of baby boomers graduating high school and college and  BC Hydro was considered a great employer.  I could hardly wait to get started on my new life. Full time work, a generous paycheck, lots of time off. The world was awaiting me! I was so glad to be done with school, the boredom and monotony of my final years there was sloughing off me like an unwanted sweater on a hot day.

Walking off my nerves seemed like a good way to spend the extra time I had that morning. I can still remember my outfit, carefully picked for the occasion. A long, denim blue corduroy skirt with matching blue sandals (hey, it was the seventies!) and a short white jacket I had made in high school sewing class. Shiny, blow-dried hair and a bit of make up on my face that still carried the baby fat of youth. The early seventies clung to the glory days of the sixties hippie look, disco had not yet hit us all with its curling irons and heavy make up so the term "fresh faced" applied.
So there I was, full of importance about my first job at such a big firm. Was I a working girl? You bet I was! Me and Mary Richards. I said "yes" to the man asking the question. "Do you have any time right now?" came his next inquiry.  The universe walloped me upside the head and shouted "Dummy!"in my ear. So much for my fresh faced look and carefully coordinated outfit.  I didn't look ready for work in an office, I looked ready for work in bed! It never occurred to me that men picked up hookers at 7:30 in the morning on a weekday. I was a girl from the suburbs but well aware of what went on in the dark of downtown Vancouver, I just hadn't factored in the daylight hours stuff. I guess this guy had recently finished a night shift and wasn't ready to go home to bed alone. There were no other women that I could see strolling the streets where I was so I got the offer.


Not wanting to seem foolish or unsophisticated for misunderstanding the man I replied, ''no sorry, I'm busy now." So grown up. He apologized for disturbing me and walked away. Welcome to the adult world, the moment seemed to say. You are tired of high school and boring Richmond and living at home and playing at life?  Well, here it is. I laughed at myself, at my huge sense of self importance that had allowed me to misread such an obvious question. I was still a child in some ways but I felt I had made a tiny step onto the ladder of adulthood. I'd been mistaken for a prostitute! How adult was that?  I looked up into that gorgeous sky and if I had of had a hat like Mary Richards on The Mary Tyler Moore Show did I would have thrown it into all that blue.

Too Much Information

They are putting a new roof on the building I live in right now and as we live on the top floor all the noise rests on our heads these days. It's making me peevish and when I feel that way I feel the need to let some of it out. My targets today are a couple of parts of the internet that drive me crazy. I love the internet, use it daily for all sorts of things, don't want to abolish it and go back to the old days but it really needs to trim the fat.

What an amazing thing it is when booking a trip to be able to look at restaurants and hotels, compare their pictures and amenities and check out the maps to find out where everything is in relationship to everything else. Truly one of the joys of the internet for me. To fine tune my bookings recently I went to the review sites and that's where the trouble started. For every positive review "Best meal of my life, so perfect!" there is an equally negative one "Don't waste your time and money, the worst!"  Then there are the long, rambling detailed reviews mentioning everybody and everything in glowing terms, most likely written by the owner's mother or next door neighbour. Those have to be ignored. After spending what feels like hours going down the rabbit holes of Tripadvisor and Yelp I finally make a judgement call based on what real truths I felt I could glean from the reviews. Yes, everyone agreed the place was noisy, decor was nice and the menu/room was small. Got it. The rest was crap.

People with an axe to grind take to the Internet, in droves. Those that were satisfied or even happy with their stay or meal or experience don't necessarily write a thing.  They might tell their friends on facebook about it while posting a picture and that's about it. Reviews of anything tend to be weighted to the very displeased  or even worse, those that just want to see their words in print on the web. Make of that what you will.

To confuse things further there is a lot of pressure from places you stay at and events you participate in to review your experience, with a not so subtle pressure in some cases to give the full five star rating. I gave a four star rating to a tour I had gone on in Italy and promptly got emailed by the owner of the company to ask why it wasn't five stars and would I please amend it as it helped them get more business if they had all five star reviews. Makes a woman want to walk away from the keyboard. After every hotel stay or restaurant booking had been fulfilled on my recent trip I received an email, "How was your experience with us? Please review it for us. People are waiting to hear what you thought!" Are they really? Aren't the other fifty or a hundred reviews enough? You need mine? I rarely review a thing unless I feel that there is something the booking public needs to know that is not mentioned on a hotel or restaurant website. On our recent trip we stayed in a brand new hotel that didn't have air conditioning as it was "green" and in an area with a cooler climate. A heat wave occurred during our stay and all the management could do was offer us a small fan to help with the discomfort.  I felt that the "greenness" of the hotel should have been highlighted on the website as it gave the hotel some definite quirks, including no air conditioning, parking, bell hops, room phones and room service. Some people might love that idea and book there because of it but those that love their a/c and having their coffee delivered in the morning should know and go elsewhere so I took to the 'net to say that.

Five years ago I felt that review sites had something to offer me, some honest evaluations of people's experiences but now, just like how Photoshop has made every picture suspect, the spectre of using fake reviews to boost your business or denigrate someone else's seems to hang over every site. I never know whether I am getting the truth or not and it makes me suspect everything. Other than my occasional posts as stated above I will try to stay away from the reviews altogether, despite the bribes being offered by restaurants for the chance to win a free meal for my five star review. I have my dignity, I won't be bought!

Then there is facebook, or as someone suggested it be called Envybook. We all do it, don't we?  We post only the carefully curated pictures of wonderful snippets of our lives, not the real truth of the everyday. These are designed precisely to make our " facebook friends" envious of what wonderful things we do and what a fantastic family, set of friends or pet we have. And it works.  If you want to feel bad about your life go on facebook for a while, see how the rest of the world is living it up.  A friend of mine was having a case of the "everyone has more fun than me" blues after perusing too much facebook material and I told her to start posting stuff herself. Anyone's life can look awesome and exciting when viewed through a narrow lens. Just cherry pick the pictures and add exciting fun captions! "Best kids ever! Love my city! Best hubby in the world! "  The truth need not enter in to it. Your child may have just told you that they hate and asked you for money, but find a pic of the two of you smiling and post away. "Great to share stuff with my fav pal!"  The "likes" will start pouring in and you'll feel better right away.  No recent pictures of fun stuff? No problem, post "memories"! It works just as well to make you feel better about your life and someone else bad about theirs. Ditto for Instagram. You get my gist.

I have a facebook account and use it to promote my blog. I don't post much other stuff and don't follow many people. I have had to unfollow several people as the postings were too much  for me to scan through continuously. Several friends of mine don't have a facebook account and they seem to get through their lives just fine. They keep their life to themselves and if they want to know what someone else is doing in theirs, they call them. Novel thought.

The internet is changing the world, improving lives, connecting people and allowing us to share information in ways that benefit all of us.  The pluses outweigh the minuses, no argument, but please, people...curb yourselves. When I think of all those reposted videos with cute cats or sassy, lecturing three year olds filling the fibre optic cables of the world and using up precious fossil fuels to cool the banks of computers processing it all it makes me cringe. And consider giving up blogging.

The High Life

We now live on the twelfth floor of a small building with only eleven other residents and we are the only renters. Our first taste of apartment life in thirty years. It's anonymous yet slightly claustrophobic at the same time. Everyone kind of knows who everyone else is because there are so few of us. Like living in a big cul de sac, where everyone can keep an eye on who is coming and going if they want, or retreat into their homes and ignore everyone. I see the same four people over and over and others, not at all. I probably ride the elevator with another person only twice a week. We expect to be alone in there and everyone gets startled when someone else appears.  I used to introduce myself if I found another occupant in the elevator but people seemed surprised when I did or they were visitors who didn't care who I was so I stopped. Everyone must know we are the new tenants but no one seems to want to know us. I think they like their sense of anonymity better than feeling like part of a small neighbourhood.  Okay, I'm good with that, a little personal space never hurt anyone.

When we first moved in at the end of March the weather was cool and I kept the windows closed. The apartment was eerily quiet, only the muted hum and clank of the elevator permeated the concrete walls. Sometimes it was the only sound that let me know there were other people around. I felt removed from life, sitting high above looking down but detached. Living in a house you have the constant backdrop of traffic near by, people chatting on the street, car doors slamming, dogs barking, birds singing. Twelve floors up behind double-paned windows all of that pretty much goes away. That coupled with all the windows everywhere I turned gave me the sensation that I was a lone goldfish silently swimming around in my big bowl, staring out at the world.  My husband was away on a business trip and I was so busy unpacking that I barely got outside. It was just me swimming above and the expanse of the city below and people trying not to know who I was in the elevator.

My closest neighbours.

We have been in the apartment a few months now and the warmer weather finally arrived. Windows in all rooms are open most days and the world has come roaring into the space. Rather than being a lone goldfish I now feel like I have the whole aquarium swirling around me. Horns, sirens, screeching tires, barking dogs, seagulls complaining as they drop crap on my balcony, it all floats up to me in a daily cacophony. That constant hum that comes with any city of decent size. Then there is all the humanity living around me in the other buildings. I have the advantage of not having any building right beside me, the closest is across the street so I watch the small snippets of other lives from a distance. Someone sunning themselves, the guy who always takes a smoke on his small balcony,  a few people tend their BBQs. One woman likes to water her plants without pants on.  Its all quite normal but yet fascinating to think of all those lives being lived around me. Together, yet apart.   At first I had the urge to close the blinds as it got dark every night, to shield myself from other curious eyes but I am used to it now and leave my blinds open in the living area, aware I am both the watcher and the watched.  Part of it all.

The stage lights come on and the play continues.

Life feels a bit loud at times up here, a bit too much of the world inside my space but I know come the fall I will close the windows and the world will go on mute again. Then I have only to step into the empty elevator and descend to the street for a walk to feel a part of it all. It is a street filled with more cars and more people than I am used to as this move has plunged us into a higher density area with lots of apartments rather than only family homes.The average age of the people on the street is younger as in this city the young cannot afford the houses I lived among before so they are here in apartments, like me. There is a different pulse and energy to it all.
Life is about change and this is just one more for us. I'm sure the noise will become like a companion and the ease of apartment living will overtake the loss of a garden and a patch of grass to call my own. I will adopt the nod and smile approach in the elevator and keep to myself, alone but surrounded, a city dweller.

Another Miracle Diet! Who Cares?

Just how hard is it to lose weight after the age of fifty? Really hard. The magazines in my online account are all blasting the same message right now - how to lose weight quick and get in shape for that beach body we are all looking for this summer. Low carb, Paleo, vegan,  liquid meal replacements, low calorie, no white food, "clean" food. It's a steady stream of what and what not to put in our mouths to get the desired result which is less fat on our bodies.  At my age it seems that you have to run harder just to stay in the same place with things like weight control and fitness. Results are hard to come by due to changing hormone levels and slower metabolisms.  My husband is a huge believer in the low carb diet and it has worked very well for him in the past but lately the results are not as impressive. I favour the low calorie, high fibre kind of diet. Again, results are not as impressive as they once were. What to do now?

I can barely remember a time when I was not concerned with my weight. That is a sad thought but true.  I was my mother's plumpest baby, with adorable, squeezable, chubby legs and arms. I grew into a normal sized child until about ten years old when the chubby reappeared. I preferred reading over running and loved potato chips and cookies so the weight stuck around. I wouldn't have made it onto the Maury Povich Show as a freakishly obese child but I did get some teasing and knew that I was not like my skinny sisters who bookended me in the family. Puberty struck and with it a huge surge in height which achieved a much desired result- I slimmed down. That stage was short lived. After high school, began a forty year period of ups and downs in my weight which continues till today.  The fat ever so slowly creeps onto my body and once I awaken to its stealth attack I ever so slowly wrestle it off. It is a slow motion battle between exhausted adversaries who will not give up the fight. No magic diets, no fast and amazing weight drops. Just a grind.

When I was chasing after my own two small children every day I could eat what I wanted and not gain weight, but otherwise I have pretty much mentally tallied every calorie that has gone in my mouth as an adult. That is a tiresome job, people.  A good friend and I have a deep bond over this issue as she, too has "dieted" most of her life.  We are living calorie counters, no app required.  The good news for us is that almost all of our slimmer peers have gone on to gain as much or more weight than we have. Age - its a great leveller. The pretty grow plain, the slim get heavy.

So now instead of being the "big girl" as I felt I was in the skinny era of the seventies, I sit in the middle of the pack even though I am over twenty pounds heavier then when I was in my twenties. My two sisters have suffered a similar fate and I'm betting it's even harder for them to deal with as their inner vision of themselves is probably much slimmer than mine is of me. Once chubby you are always chubby in your head. I can feel you "inner fatties" nodding. I understand.

Me at 18 years old,
Oh, to be so "big" again!

Weight loss is not out of my reach, its just an equation, calories in, calories burned. Simple. But here's where I see the real change for those of us over fifty, beyond metabolic rates and loss of muscle...we just don't care as much.  The media finally has less effect on us and our self worth as determined by our thigh gap (I've never had one - see picture). We want to enjoy life and what we have worked hard for and sometimes that includes a piece of chocolate, an extra glass of wine or some of the demon white flour in the form of pasta or a baguette. No young man with the body of a Greek god is breaking down my door, promising me love if I would just lose those extra ten pounds and then we could run away and make the world envious with our physical beauty. No, that is not happening. I am invisible to young Greek gods now but I am healthy, reasonably fit, not on any medications.  That is what I care about now.

I just read an article in Prevention Magazine about health and fitness expectations for every decade in a woman's life. After sixty, it said, don't worry about those few extra pounds. They are needed to protect you if you fall (padding!) and will come in handy if you get seriously ill. Now that is the best news I've read all year. I will no longer consider myself overweight but rather I am in self protection mode.

Do You Believe in Miracles?

My mother once told me that every marriage was a little miracle. Quite a statement. She was married for almost sixty years so she witnessed her own little miracle. Any marriage of that length has its ups and downs and to be able to ride them out and have a happy enough final decade of marriage that you are bereaved when it's over, well, that's a miracle in my books. Unlike many widowed women, my mother was anxious to get right back into another relationship, she missed her marriage. I know of other older women who were griefstricken at the loss of their husbands but when that passed they had no desire for another one.  None. Life was much easier with only one person's needs to take of and no one trying to control you. I can see that but it does not mean their marriage wasn't a miracle while it lasted. It was.

I was at a celebration of life for my dear uncle on the weekend and he had had a long and happy marriage to my aunt. She predeceased him by more than a year and a half and he longed to be reunited with her even if it meant death. That's a commitment to your marriage! While at the gathering I chatted a bit with my cousins children who are at the beginning of their adventures in miracles. One is married, two are engaged and one lives common law. My niece and nephew recently had marriages of their own. It comes with the age bracket I am in now, children of friends and relatives are getting married for the first time. It starts one to pondering.

I believe that living together and marriage are not the same thing. I have done both so I know what it feels like, and that being said, I admit that living together for a long time with someone with or without the label of marriage is quite a feat. I don't know of as many lengthy common law relationships as I do marriages but that is changing and I will be interested to see if common law marriages last as long as often as the old fashioned kind. We humans can go through some pretty profound changes as we mature and keeping a relationship humming along through all that is challenging. Throw in the destabilizing factor of children and career changes and well, it really is a miracle that the divorce rate is only about 50%.  Are you the same person you were ten, twenty or thirty years ago? Some parts of ourselves never change but our opinions, tastes, interests and health certainly can. The challenge is to keep subtly reinventing a relationship as each party in it morphs and becomes more who they really are. Age strips away some of the willingness to please, to accommodate, to make the glass slipper fit by cutting off a toe. We just want to be ourselves and be accepted as such. Many, if not all couples see rocky patches in their marriages and often it is that fragile but binding thing called "marriage" that keeps them together until they can find their balance again. Sometimes it works and the marriage continues, often it doesn't. When a marriage falls apart it doesn't mean that marriage was a failure, it just ran its course and ceased to be a miracle. For some the marriage was never a little miracle in the making, it was just never going to work.

Watching the young couples around me marry and start down the road of trying to create their lasting miracle makes me think what an optimistic lot we are, us human beings. I mean, really, the divorce rate has hovered around the 50% mark for decades now, higher for second and third marriages. Some of this young love is doomed to fail when it comes to adapting to living with another person and yet the institution of marriage is still there and a whole segment of people are clamouring to get in on it. Gay marriage is a growing market showing again that marriage and living together are different animals. For some people living together is just not enough. And just as surely as the horse gets followed by the carriage, gay divorce will follow gay marriage for many couples. Divorce lawyers are thrilled as a whole new demographic is being added to their practice. Miracles are hard to create, gay or straight.

Marriage is so full of compromise. And what is compromise but a state in which neither party gets exactly what they want. Sort of a fine/fine rather than a win/win or win/lose. And yet we continue to marry and to stay married, and to remarry after divorce. But then people keep opening new restaurants on the site where others have failed so there is that unbridled optimism again. You have to hand to us, it takes a lot to keep us down sometimes.  I am traversing my thirty fourth year of marriage and at this point feel I will stay married until the "death do us part" thing happens but it's not totally up to me, it takes two people to make each little miracle happen. In these times where miracles feel far and few between I will take what I have, consider it miraculous and wish the same for those just saying their vows. Good luck to you,  and believe in miracles.

Finally Surfacing From Moving Madness

Hello again to my few and faithful followers. I have not disappeared, merely been sidetracked by a more difficult settling in period to our new apartment than expected and an unusually prolonged and painful bout of back pain. The two things go hand and hand of course, the moving process aggravates my back and the ensuing pain limits what I can do with the unpacking and setting up of our home. Such is life. Sometimes it hands you an enforced slow down and I am in such a moment right now.

Thankfully, my husband has a good strong back to do the heavy lifting when he is around and the large jobs have for the most part been done.  My initial "to do" lists have been ticked off, chores and errands completed, only to be replaced by new lists. The apartment we rented has not been that well maintained as will happen with rental properties and that has caused me some headaches. The rental manager receives almost daily emails from me about problems and I'm sure she is enjoying receiving them as much as I enjoy sending them. Not very much.

Another nasty leak discovered.

She is doing her best to work through the issues but the whole thing leaves me braindead and tired at the end of the day, popping Advil and laying on heating pads. Not a situation conducive to thinking up witty, creative ideas for blog posts. I'm obviously not as good a multitasker as I thought I was.

On the bright side, literally, the sun has finally come out. It pours through the many windows in my new home and cheers me up as I struggle to get upright some days. I'm exploring my neighbourhood on foot with short walks when I can get breaks from the visits of appliance repairmen and other service people. This last sunny weekend was such a gift, I felt summer had moved in. Ted and I walked to Granville Island and enjoyed a lunch on the deck at Bridges, putting our "to do" list on hold for a while and just relaxing together. Then it was back home to get things done but the pause was rejuvenating.

The birds welcomed us to the neigh-
bourhood with a spray of poop. Yup,
that's how its going.

As I said in a previous post it is not the packing and actually moving of our stuff that is the hard part of a move, it's making a place a home. Making our square pegs fit into round holes takes some effort. It's not rocket science, it just takes time and energy and many trips to Home Depot. Some moves are easier than others in this arena.... furniture fits, electronics work, appliances do what they are supposed to and other times....well, let's just say we are in one of those other times.
These are all First World problems, I am well aware of that, they are nothing to lose sleep over merely details to be dealt with. And they will be dealt with and my back will continue to improve and all will be right as rain soon enough. Oops, didn't mean to mention rain.

If you have opened this post and read to this point, thanks for sticking with me. It has been a year now of blogging for me and I have taken time to assess and review the whole venture while lying on my back in the floor letting my muscles relax.  I have considered stopping blogging at this time and that is still on the table but for right now I will continue and see where it leads me.
Post a comment, send me an email at whatfayesaid@gmail.com  or forward this post to someone who might read it. I appreciate all of it.

It's Just Allergies....

The gentlemen standing behind me in the cashier line at TJ Maxx is gripping a mittful of cleaning aids - a broom, a mop, several different dusters. I comment to him that he looks like he has a big job ahead of him.  That is all that's required to launch him into a tale of his battle against the dust of Palm Springs. His frustration pours out of him as he tells me of wearing out the bristles on his broom from so much sweeping, his embarrassment at telling anyone how many different allergy meds he is on, how his mother's trip here from Ireland is being ruined by her congestion due to allergic reactions to the desert dust. He grew up on a hay farm in Ireland and never suffered a day of allergies from either the hay, the other vegetation on the farm or the animals. It wasn't until he moved to the paradise of Palm Springs that he experienced the torment of seasonal allergies.  

Cactus flowers

The desert in bloom.

Due to the higher than normal rainfall in Southern California this winter the desert is in a "superbloom" year. Everything that can bloom IS blooming. Very pretty but more pollen than normal. Couple that with more wind than usual and you have a recipe for rhinitis.  Being an allergy sufferer myself and someone who has experienced the losing battle of keeping out the dust of  the desert I nod in solidarity and let him express his irritation. I understand. 

People that don't have allergies don't want to hear about yours. In fact, some of you will quit reading right now so as not to hear from us whiners.  Go on then, stop reading.  I'll wait for you to go..... ok. Many people have no patience for what is perceived as the minor problem of a runny nose in spring but to those of us that suffer there is more to the picture. Here is a direct quote from a US government website for the National Centre for Biotechnology Information. (Http//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov):
"The rates of depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance (suicide risk factors) are greater in patients with allergic rhinitis than in the general population." But it's just allergies, right? If you ask the average person which time of the year they think has the highest rate of suicide most people will tell you the winter, or more specifically Christmas time, the holiday season.  In actuality spring, specifically May has the highest rate of suicide across all different nations and cultures. There are many, many theories as to why that would be. It seems to run counter to what we want to agree upon anecdotally.  Winter makes us miserable, we say,  we feel lonelier at the holidays if we are alone, not enough sunlight makes us cranky.  Springtime is rebirth, longer days, warmer days, more beauty and possibility in our life, why would more people kill themselves or at least try to kill themselves then?  I have a one word answer...allergies.  See quote above. It is as good a theory as any and has had much investigation about it. Allergies make you feel crappy, they give you itchy eyes, a runny nose, a mucus clogged throat, headaches or else the dopiness that comes with the stronger antihistamines. The feeling of having a cold that never goes away. New medicines are better at keeping you alert but not as effective at keeping down the symptoms.  A constant trade off. They may also be a symptom of other chemical imbalances going on in the brain. 

They bloom everywhere! 

Pretty and pollinating

My siblings all suffer from allergies to different degrees, as do my sons, one particularly badly so I've had a lot 
discussion and trial and error about coping with allergies, both seasonal and food related. Antihistamines, cortisone nasal sprays, the traditional neti pot, vitamin supplements, acupuncture, air cleaners...they have all been tried. Canadians suffer from one of the highest rates of allergies in the world, thanks in part to our abundant supply of trees and plants but probably as well from some of our ethnic backgrounds. Light haired, light eyed people suffer more from allergies of all kinds. Thanks, Ove and Dagmar, my Scandinavian grandparents. 

As I listened to my red haired, Irish friend in the TJ Maxx line up I sympathized.  The dusty desert winds of places like Phoenix and Palm Springs are not kind to me either. The only place I have found so far where I am allergy free is Hawaii, perhaps a less obvious reason why I enjoy Hawaii so much but just as important as the sun and sand. When I'm there I can leave the house without a couple of emergency tissues in my pocket, I don't startle people with my trios of sneezes, I can sleep without waking from mucus choking me in the middle of the night. Let me tell you, that can endear you to a place! The different vegetation and the constant blowing trade winds work together to bring me relief no antihistamine can match. 
So with this in mind, when someone sneezes next to you in a line up and they rush to assure you "it's JUST allergies", instead of rolling your eyes, send them a little loving thought and tell them you hope they feel better soon. 

It Never Rains in Southern California

I have the great fortune to be spending some time in Palm Springs right now. And it's true, when you are here in the desert it does feel as if it never rains in Southern California as Albert Hammond tried to tell us. Although he did go on to sing that it "pours, man, it pours". And so it does some years. It has been a rainy and snowy year for California and they are about to experience the flooding that comes with the snow melt but here on the desert side of the San Jacinto mountains it feels like another world. I have included a picture of the blue sky so that those remaining in Vancouver can have a reference point.

Before you get hating on me I will let you know that I did my time in Vancouver this year. I was there for it all, the month of snow, then more snow, the unending rain in March. This was the first winter in many that I did not get an opportunity to escape to somewhere warm and sunny, warm enough to be in a bathing suit for part of the day. So I had to scrape the mould from behind my ears as I boarded the plane for California and the greenish, algae-like tint is slowly leaving my skin the more time I spend in the sun here. I feel your pain.
I am a born and bred Wet Coaster. Lived all my life in BC, most of it in the lower mainland. I know rain. My parents were born and raised in the area, rain is mixed in with my blood. I am used to it. But this winter has tried the spirit and soul of even those of us born to the wet weather.

When climate change was first discussed it was all about the idea of global warming, we would be growing lemons and oranges in our back yards, no more skiing in the snow-less mountains. Palm trees would abound, why, Vancouver was to become the new Los Angeles as Los Angeles withered up and blew away or sank into the sea.  Now the buzzwords are global climate change. Ah, that is a bit different. That leaves things open to all kinds of interpretations, expect anything! Los Angeles and Southern California were deluged with moisture this winter as were we in the Vancouver area. And still are according to reports I'm getting from friends at home. There won't be any orange groves in Vancouver surviving the snow we saw or flourishing in the few hours of tepid sunshine this spring has had to offer. Even our native gardens didn't survive the weather we had. Lawns turned to mush and then froze. Thawed and got rained on again and are now mostly moss. Trees that were never meant to carry eight inches of wet heavy snow were snapping their branches off in desperation to be free of the weight. Hedges splayed outwards, long branches escaping their tidy boundaries, requiring amputation.  In my neighbourhood the city workers were still cleaning the fall leaves off the streets in February, leaves that had been caught under the snow and ice and could finally be swept away.

Easterners laugh at our bitching and moaning and tell stories of snow so high they have to shovel out of their front door in the morning. That is precisely why I don't live in eastern Canada, or central
Canada, or northern Canada. I live as far south and almost as far west as I can get to escape Canadian weather. If Canada, instead of the U.S. had managed to strike a deal with Hawaii, or we had annexed  the Turks and Caicos like it had been discussed in 1974 then I would be living in one of those two places right now, I'm betting. I went to Hawaii for the first time at the age of eighteen and fell in love. Not with a person but with the islands. I had no idea such a paradise existed so close to home and so accesssible and I  tried to figure out how as a teenager with few skills I could wrangle a green card and stay there. It was not to be. But if I had had the Turks and Caicos to go to at eighteen....

  Don't you want to be here right now?

Courtesy of Turks and Caicos Tourism

Americans really have the choice to live in any kind of weather they want while staying in America. The U.S. has it all covered, weatherwise. Dry, wet, cold, steamy, arid, scorchingly hot. I envy them that.  The plan to make the Turks and Caicos our eleventh province was floated around again in 2013 and I'm hoping one day the Queen will give it up to us Canadians. Let us have our version of Puerto Rico or Hawaii, a tropical  dream with Canadian currency, the English language, a Caribbean flair,  and lots of room for our damp and chilled populace to to flake out on the beaches. It would be nice if it happened before global climate change melts the glaciers, raises the sea levels and sinks the Turks and Caicos. Fingers crossed.

Moved!

My move is done, just the aftermath to deal with. Everyone thinks the hard part is the packing and the actual moving. It's not. That's the easy... well, easier part. Taping together boxes and filling them is rote and mindless work, physically tiring and endless but it's just repetitive grunt work.  For the

Unpacking

move, we use a major moving company and they are great. They send two trucks, five guys and everyone is polite, respectful of our home and our stuff and know what they are doing. The moves usually go seamlessly as far as getting all our stuff from one place and into another.  It's all the rest of the moving details that make me crazy. Even the transfer of utilities is pretty painless now. I do as much online as a I can and we had our phone, internet, cable and utilities all set up the day after the move. Its the things you can't foresee that knock you sideways, as with life in general. And there are always things you can't foresee, even after as many moves as I have handled.

This move started with a mix up over keys. Due to issues with the rental agency we could only have one garage/elevator key fob. A bit of a problem when the fob is needed for everything and my husband and I had to be in two different places. I am still waiting for the extra fobs four days later. Then there was the leak. This is the second move we have had where a water leak was found on move in day, and leaks are problems, BIG problems, my friend. The previous leak required a refinishing of all the wood floors in the main floor of the home we had just moved into. All our furniture, carpets, artwork etc had to be moved out again for the floors to be redone. This time the leak is in the ceiling of our laundry room and will require the removal of drywall, etc, etc. It is starting to smell already. Welcome to your new home, Faye!

Ted having his non-Zen moment.

This is what a room full of paper looks
like when tamed.

Having boxes and packing paper delivered to your house is a breeze, one phone call and there they are. I also get used boxes off of Craigslist so they come into the house in small amounts. After a move there is a huge mound of flattened boxes to get rid of and enough crumpled packing paper to fill a room. Ted took on the most-dreaded job of flattening the paper and the boxes. The boxes were no challenge, a good knife, a few slits through the tape and a big space-gobbling box is flat against the wall. Very satisfying.  But the paper proved to be another thing altogether. I have friends who won't come near my house now until after the paper has been flattened. Everyone has been called in to help with it at one time or another and if you can get into the Zen moment of it the act can be relatively painless but if you don't it becomes the most disliked job in a move.  Ted rose to the challenge and smoothed out paper for hours but by the end he was ranting and raving, swearing to NEVER, EVER flatten a piece of moving paper again! Not too Zen. It's not rocket science but believe me, its a challenge. If you don't flatten it out you will be hauling garbage bags of crumpled paper out of your home for days.

Ted has left on a trip and I will be joining him in a couple of days. Till then I am, arranging for repairs, waiting for key fobs, slowly emptying boxes and stowing things away, all the while knowing I will most likely have to rearrange it all again. And maybe once more after that. No two houses have the same storage or closets and where you keep things is always going to be different. Moving is easy compared to settling in and making a home. And therein lies the most difficult part of the move, making someone else's home feel like yours. I'm pretty good at that part but it takes time. Check back with me in a couple of months and I'll let you know how its going but for now I'm still trying to find that damn wine opener!

Ted's office awaits him.

On The Move Again

I am moving at the end of this month.  This will be the fifth move in less than eight years for my husband and me.  It seems even worse when I see it written down. We are not young adults in our twenties with some clothes, a computer and a bed.  We are grown-ups with lots of stuff.  Lots and lots of stuff. About 13,000 pounds actually despite my many donations to the thrift store. I know what that amount of stuff feels like because I have packed and unpacked every item, each move, with my own hands.  When my husband brought up the idea of moving last month, the thought was unbearable to me, the memory of the last move was still fresh in my mind. The muscle memory was still there, all that bending, lifting, and the screeching of the tape gun, the stacks and stacks of packing paper. Ugh. But life wasn't always like this.

We lived in the first house we purchased for three years, then came a baby and the move to a larger house where we stayed five years and had another child.  The universe aligned and we had a chance to buy a view home and turn it into our dream home and spend fifteen happy years there. This was the longest period that either my husband or myself had spent anywhere. When our youngest son entered his final year of high school we were ready to move on from the suburbs and head back to the city.  The only problem with that was the difference in house values. For what we sold our large view home for in the 'burbs we could purchase a two bed, two bath apartment in Vancouver. So we decided to rent. That's where the trouble began. Selling a large home can be difficult, it took us six months, but giving your notice on a rental is easy. Thirty days and you are gone.

ah, the smell of new
boxes!

We stayed almost two and a half years in the first rental before Ted found a view home for rent he had to have. We moved. The kids were both gone so we had gotten rid of what felt like pounds and pounds of belongings when they went but it still felt like I was packing up a three ring circus.
The new home was lovely, the view stupendous, so nice in fact that after ten months we were given an eviction notice by the owner who wanted to move back in.  She couldn't find any where else to live that she liked as well. Our first eviction notice. We had to be out by the end of January, a terrible time to be looking for a place and an even more terrible time to actually be moving. Happy New Year everyone, pass the packing boxes.

Therein lies one of the downsides to renting, you are at the mercy of the owner. Our next move proved that out as well. We found a home with a more modest view and many, many stairs. Living there was like living on a Stairmaster. I developed buns of steel and after two and a half years grew weary of hauling my groceries up two long flights of stairs to the kitchen, steel buns or not.  I told our rental manager that we would not be renewing our lease and she said, "that's great, because the owners are moving back in!" They were supposed to have moved permanently to China but "surprise!" So we couldn't have stayed even if we had wanted to. Out came the boxes I had stored in the crawlspace. I never give away boxes, you can appreciate why.
This takes us to our current home which we have lived in for 18 months. I could happily stay here another year, not because I love the house so much but because I am so tired of moving. Really, really tired of moving.  My husband is unhappy in our current place and will not stop looking for another rental so he has agreed to help more with the move and I have very reluctantly agreed to go.

On top of my own moves I have helped my mother with her seven moves in the last seven and a half years. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, apparently. In the last decade there has been around 25 moves between my siblings, my two children and my mother, add our five and we are at 30 or more as a family not counting nieces and nephews. That's insanity. And a lot of boxes and tape.

My siblings seem to be staying put for now, I'm hoping my mother does, too but I'm not counting on it. My children don't require my physical help with their moves so that just leaves us. My husband thinks he will love our new place for years to come but I am too jaded now to believe that. Plus we are still at the mercy of the owner who can chose to evict us.  I am thrilled by the recent drop in home prices in Vancouver, (sorry, to those that own one) and am dreaming one day of a place of my own that doesn't have a stack of folded boxes in the basement waiting to be refilled. Someone once commented to me that I must really enjoy moving since I do it so often. I don't but I AM getting good at it. Gotta go, the tape gun is calling me.

Modern Art -Groundbreaking or Garbage?

Modern art is really a crazy trip. People scoff at it, laugh at it and always say "I could do that!"when they view it. I recently spent some time at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA as it's known and all those things went through my head or passed my lips while I was there. But there is something energizing and fresh about modern art that makes you crack a smile as opposed to viewing the great masters of old with their solemn portraits, still lifes or gory battles. I'm not taking anything away from the beauty of the classics and their ability to provoke emotion, I love art of all kinds but modern art was what I was there to see.

The Coffee Pot by
Picasso

 Modern art is considered roughly the time frame from the 1860's to the 1970's so it takes in Picasso, Chagall and Klimt as well as the 60's bad boys Warhol, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Pollock and the like.  Anything newer than that is considered contemporary or post modern. The "old" modernists were just as irreverent and ground breaking in their smashing of tradition as the group from the sixties were for their time. We are so used to Picasso and his Cubism, and Dali with his melting clocks that we don't stop to realize sometimes how shocking their work was to their audience. Chagall's dreamy visions were no more appreciated by the masses when they were first seen than Warhol's can of tomato soup was.

In walking though SFMOMA's wonderful collection I was really struck by the irreverent attitude and "in your face", raised middle finger aspect of the work from the fifties to the seventies. It felt like the artists weren't even trying to be "painterly", they were just doing what they wanted and daring you to like it or buy it. It was my first time seeing one of Richard Rauschenberg's White Paintings series. It consists of three large panels, a triptych, each one painted all white. There have been many jokes made at its expense over the years.  While my brain was thinking 'now THAT I could do', I was laughing at the sheer audacity of it. It seemed to say, "I'm a painter, I painted it, its art so f*** you." And there is no point in trying to do it now, it's been done.

Andy Warhol, Self Portrait 1967

Andy Warhol was well known for his portraits, using Polaroids he took of famous people and reproducing them with screen printed colours on top. Elvis, Dolly Parton and his self- portraits are among the SFMOMA collection. He had many people help him with the work or do it under his direction further breaking down the image of what an artist was or was not. He is the biggest selling artist after Picasso so obviously he did something right, love him or hate him. The sixties were a turbulent time of great change in America and the art work of the time truly reflects that. Boundaries and barriers were coming down everywhere. It was an "anything goes" era, and the artists were the conduit for it. The massive canvases with their bold colours almost leap off the walls, demanding attention, energy made visible. They cannot be ignored.
From the powerful work of Diego Rivera to the striking and delicate colour block abstractions of Mondrian to the elegant moving mobiles of Alexander Calder, through to the polka dot cartoon images of Lichtenstein the SFMOMA has much to offer. The building itself is a thing of beauty, open spacious and  modern,  filled with light coloured, wood floors and high-ceilinged rooms. The pugnacious energy of the modern art bounces around the rooms and invites you to dare to say it's not art. I loved it but there was one piece that stood out in my mind, Untitled (1971) by Cy Twombly. A large piece that looked exactly like a blackboard that had been erased many times and then scribbled over. Standing in front of it all I could think was, "okay, Cy, now you really are having us on."

Untitled, 1971 by Cy Twombly