Beautiful Aging Souls Are We

As I continue to let my hair gray, sometimes I catch my reflection and think "Who is this older woman?" Usually I celebrate her but also, in some moments, mourn my younger self, while loving the arrival of my gray and the new, more real me & authentic, natural beauty.

It's a lot to put together this whole aging thing isn't it? Even though, in simpler terms, it's as natural as getting our baby teeth. 

Lately a friend questioned whether she should dye her gorgeous gray locks while looking for a new job. I suggested that she doesn't. I questioned if she really wants to work for someone who might judge her ability to be a good employee partly by her age and hair color. 

It’s unfortunate that we even have to consider this question. Women certainly more than men. 

The whole ageism culture we live in is exhausting head trash. I desire, at least in some small way, to change people's perceptions of the aging process. 

My wish for everyone is to age more peacefully, like the generations of women who aged before us. 

How lucky we are to be able to age?

So lucky, especially as of late, with the boogie monster of Covid all around us.

So in this light, I have two things to share with you this week. The first is my PINTEREST BOARD that is full of gorgeous, wrinkly, beautiful, aging souls.

Eye candy. Truly.

The softening of all of us. 

We are all works of art.  

The 2nd is a PODCAST with Brene Brown and Sonya Renee Taylor, the author of The Body Is Not an Apology- The Power of Radical Self -Love .

SONYA'S WEBSITE is also fabulous and has a free download on 10 Tools For Radical Self- Love, on the right hand side of her homepage.

Chow and love for now, my aging beauties. 💜

Comic Elixir

Thank you Agent Orange impersonator, SARAH COOPER, for helping us through this nightmare.

Keep it coming, you're fabulous!

Live the Questions

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.


~Rainer Maria Rilke

The Garden

I am mid-way though a year long certification with COACH TRAINING INSTITUTE to be a health & wellness coach. I am loving the program, all the learning & relearning and the great people I have met. I don't want it to end. I love how coaching is really about getting down underneath and processing deeper emotions. The feelings that frequently leave us stuck and keep us from having a more alive and fulfilling life.

Prior to starting school, throughout the craziness of the past few years, I received a lot of advice of course, but one piece in particular rang especially true for me.

It was:

"Don't eat off someone else's plate. For instance, don't pick up someone else's knitting project and start knitting, as if their project is your own." 

So good.

So I was especially delighted when my sister forwarded me a post written by Betsy Burris, who is a coach for teachers and has a coaching practice, called TEACHING THROUGH EMOTIONS. I connected with her search for deeper emotions in her practice, as well as how her piece below, titled The Garden, resonates with the concept of not eating off someone else's plate.

I dig her analogy about people being gardens! 

Kind of like, don't poke around in my garden or start knitting on my knitting project and I won't do it to you.

I bring you Betsy:

"OK this is going to seem really simplistic, but many teachers I’ve worked with have found it helpful. 

Here goes: 

When I think of people, when I think of individuals, I think of gardens. I think of each of us as standing in the center of a circle- a garden wall- filled with flowerbeds.

The garden wall is a boundary, a personal boundary, a membrane that defines where we end and others begin.

The garden is ourselves: our needs, our safety, our identities, our happiness, our interests, our power, our reality. 

We cultivate our own gardens. We choose what flowers we plant and where and when we plant them. Ideally, we make our gardens beautiful and safe for ourselves. We range freely in our gardens and value them. 

And we decide if and when anybody else gets to come into our gardens. We build up our gardens walls, lower them, open the garden gate, close the garden gate. We invite people in when we want to and, when we don’t want them in our gardens, we have the right to tell them to get out. Ideally.

I told you it would be simplistic!

But the metaphor is also really useful.

Because, if my garden is my reality and your garden is your reality, then I don’t get to trash your garden. I don’t even get to enter your garden without your permission. I get to talk to you over our garden walls about our gardens, try to understand why you planted deadly nightshade right next to your garden gate, admire your hollyhocks, think about planting some of my own.

I get to wonder about your garden, your reality, from the safety of my own garden, my own reality.

I don’t have to take on your problems or energy or emotions. I don’t have to convince you to make your garden look like mine. I might think your garden desperately needs tending, but when I remind myself that it is yours, I’m clear that the weeds in your garden are not my responsibility. I might wonder about them; I might express concern about them; I might itch to pull them; but I don’t need to fight you about them. They’re yours.

Conflict happens, I believe, when I charge into your garden and start planting or fixing or weeding or judging or-UGH-defining your garden for you. Or when you do this to me. Engagement happens when I can be curious about you and your garden without co-opting or colonizing it. And, importantly,

when I am confident that I can prevent you from co-opting or colonizing my garden.

I’m here in my garden. You’re there in yours. Let’s be clear about that."

With love from my garden to yours,

Louise

Choosing Hope Over Fear

my ode to my mom & dad, the birch tree lovers

"It's easy to get overwhelmed...

to wake up at 3AM questioning every decision you've ever made.

It's easy to feel like your life isn't working or your plans aren't panning out.

That's the fear.

When you feel that make a decision to replace it with hope and trust instead.

Trust yourself and where your life is going.

Trust the chances you're taking.

Always pick hope over fear."


~Awesome wisdom from
Maya Angelou

Navigating the Asylum

Painting by Patty Bromberg

This past fall while talking with a friend, they paused a minute and observed, "You've been navigating the asylum."

"That's such a perfect description," I said.

I've been wanting to write about it ever since.

But where to begin?

Another friend sent me a link to the New York Times, where people can submit intimate stories. It got me thinking- what would I title my story if I ever sent one in, anonymously?

Perhaps I would title it The Year of the Lie.

I thought of this title because part of navigating the asylum for me was so complex and private that only a handful of very close people knew what I was going through.

For months and months I'd see friends, who I have known for decades, who had no idea what I was navigating in my life (besides my mom who had EXTREME PARANOIA FROM ALZHEIMER'S and two other family members who were very ill). It was a relief to at least let some of the pressure out of bubble that I was living in, by sharing this with them.

During those days, I felt like an impostor.

And for me, it had to be that way, because I needed privacy around myself, while I figured my way through it. Like an emotional obstacle.

Plus, the more people who knew, the more people I felt I needed to keep updated on the situation when they touched based, out of concern.

So many times I'd awake in the middle of the night and think, "What the FUCK has happened to my life?"

My sister said that I was in the BARDO, a Buddhist term for a transitional state between death & rebirth.

I was a woman, alone on a boat out at sea, where a storm had rolled in and I tossed and turned in the churning waves, whilst trying to find my footing & balance.

I had to take my sail down in an effort to survive the storm. I had to go down in the galley and shut the hatch tightly overhead and sit and wait out the harsh winds.

I had to be alone, and sit in the darkness and be patient with all the things the storm churned up and taught me about who I am and what I needed next in my life.

Finally it was time to share MY STORY.

In time I found a direction out of the storm and as the days and months have carried on, the storm has settled. I've poked my head up out of the hatch and come back up on deck. Things are calming in my life and calm is what I crave and where I want to be.

Lately, with new insight and information, I am looking at life through a new lens. Still unsure where it is all going to land, I will say this- that spiritually and energetically- navigating the asylum has been perhaps one, big, great gift.

More to follow in time.

Stay warm, and let's keep loving people and taking care of ourselves,
as sometimes it's the only thing we can do.
xo

There is a Crack

 Yesterday on Pleasant Lake

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in

That's how the light gets in

~Leonard Cohen



It’s been a few years of being cracked wide open, and splintered apart and I can honestly say now that I am grateful for all of it.

Without the cracks, I would never have seen, learned and embraced so many of the lessons that I have on this spiritual journey. I feel more whole now than I ever have.


More to come in the New Year. 

As always,

in love & light,

Louise

Deep Within Us

The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all,

and then stands back to see if we can find them.

 ~ Elizabeth Gilbert


I think of my mama frequently as I've made my way through the new life that I have been creating for myself. How she so seemingly, effortlessly, began a new path and understanding of herself at the age of 90, when she moved to the Boston area, for her final resting.

How she reached out and made new friends and continued to learn new things. How perhaps she grew to know the artist in herself a little more deeply. How she learned new ways of being in the world through her experiences and through what came across her path, that ignited a spark in her and lit her up, like a new dawn. Until about age 95, she remained excited about life and optimistic about her days, even though, like me, she had her moments of uneasiness and doubt. To me she always seemed to be reaching for a new spice to sprinkle in her life.

And the beauty of all of this is, I got to witness it all, like a primer, for what would soon follow for me, after her passing.

Frequently during her last few years, I would ask her what the secret is. Many of her responses here were after the deep dementia had begun to settle in:

Mom what’s the secret?

Being good to other people and being careful about how you treat them.

Mom what’s the secret?

Be thankful for what you have

Mom what’s the secret?

Love each other. Be friendly. Be as active as you can be.

Mom what’s the secret?

Two glasses of water to start each day.

Mom what’s the secret?

Take good care of life.

Mom what’s the secret?

Climbing Mount Marcy.

Mom what’s the secret?

You tell me.

No you tell me

Mom what’s the secret?

Good friends. Having a change with people you like to see

Mom what's the secret?

Having someone to love.


Thank you mama for inspiring me to love life through my senses even more, as the older we grew. Sight, taste, sound, smell and touch,

especially touch.

I love you dearly.

Remembering What We Want

Photo by Belovodchenko Anton

I stumbled upon this quote recently:

Discipline is remembering what we want.

It's a good one.

For some reason I have hardly ever been at a loss for knowing what I want. It shifts, and morphs, and re-balances to be sure, but like most of you probably, at any given moment, I am pretty adept at putting my finger on what it is that is going to ring my bell.

So maybe we know what we want, especially the older and wiser we grow. We could make lists about what we want in every little area of our life. From what we desire for dinner to the much bigger picture in life- like how we want our world to be. We could make notes about how we prefer to feel, how much stress we want in our life, how much downtime and together time we need. About what we want to do with our now precious time and who we want to hang with. Basically how we want to operate and maneuver, through the rest of our days.

And more importantly for me right now, how to create the connection and intimacy I crave.

Every day, actually, we make decisions about who we want to be.

So where is the disconnect between knowing what we want and then doing something that is totally not in line with what we want?

Ahh yes- we forget what we want. Sometimes just temporarily, but frequently, for way too long. Or, what we want seems so outlandish and outside the possibility of who we have always know ourselves to be, that we give up on what we want before we even try.

Usually out of fear.

Or maybe it's that we get too tired or too hungry or too overwhelmed, or sick, or too exhausted from having someone else be sick, and we forget to listen to our internal compass. Life happens. Things get in the way. There are bills to pay, and fires to put out and mouths to feed.

Sometimes there are just too many flies buzzing around our head.

Well this I know- the only remedy for remembering what we want- is to slow down long enough, and get quiet enough, so that we can hear ourselves. For some people it's meditation, but for me I can pinpoint so many things in my life, and zero in my happiness, when I am out running, hiking, swimming laps and more recently, biking.

Discipline is remembering what we want.

Gosh I wish I knew this when I was younger.

For more related reading, I've another post here.

Have a good week.

Get quiet.

Listen to our hearts. It's right here with each of us, waiting for us to put our hand on it and take care of it.

Oh yes- and one more thing. I love the magnificence of the photo above. Among other things, like the lighting, I love the peeling paint.

Belovodchenko Anton, you have outdone yourself.

My Visit to Cuba

I had yearned to visit Cuba since my early years of watching I love Lucy and seeing Ricky Ricardo play the bongo drums in his Cuban nightclub.

This and that I've been very curious about the country, just 90 miles off the coast of Key West, especially since Diana Nyad peaked my interest when she successfully swam the voyage from Cuba to Key West in 53 hours in 2013 ( her 5th courageous attempt).

Cuba, a land that has been so close, yet so far away, because of the complicated political landscape.

It turns out that now it's quite easy to visit Cuba. Much easier than I had imagined. All you need to do is get a visa at a gateway airport and pick one of 13 reasons for traveling there. I chose "Support The Cuban People." I arrived armed with an itinerary to do this and held onto whatever receipts I was able to collect to prove my whereabouts. The truth is however, I don't think anyone is really checking to see if visitors have simply sat on the beach as their  primary form of entertainment.

What I liked most about Cuba was the music (which I didn't get enough of) and the kindness of all the people that I came in touch with, especially the cab drivers.

One of the other things that drew me to Cuba was all the old cars. It occurred to me while there that this was most likely because when I was born, being the 5th child, my parents decided to buy a Checker cab to tote around their growing family. By the time I was in kindergarten, this was a very embarrassing car to be seen in, but in reflection, it is one of the little gems of my childhood.

One of the other things I liked is that much of Havana is in disrepair or even in ruins. This of course is sad, in many ways, but I love the beauty of imperfection and the Wabi-Sabi that is everywhere in Cuba.

Two other highlights, besides sitting down and people watching, were swimming in the warm, beautiful aqua waters of the Gulf of Mexico and visiting Hemingway's home, as seen in 3 of  the photos below.

Being in Cuba only 4 days, I didn't get to venture outside of Havana like I had wanted to. Especially to the village of Vinales, as well as to the chocolate factories in the oldest town of Baracoa.

For more good info on the villages of Cuba click here.

Hemingway's home

Hemingway's home

Hemingway's home

Shoemakers in Havana

View from breakfast at the hotel

Cab ride to the beach in the taxi driver's grandfather's 1955 car

Day at the beach with a beer and fish for lunch

Havana cathedral

Our Souls Must Notice What We Do With Them

"Our bodies shrink, crumble, lose their robustness, while the face gains distinction and beauty. How sad that we don't see enough old faces in the youth-crazed west, I thought. Surely some ethical damage occurs when the faces of old people aren't on view, or their faces have been tucked, pulled and made-over, preventing wisdom from seeping through the cracks. It seems dishonest to keep hidden what becomes of our true faces. Our souls must notice what we do with them."

By Laurie Gough

Thank you for your beautiful wisdom Laurie.

From her book, Kiss the Sunset Pig

 

Finding the Good

One of the challenging things for me this past year has been receiving the news that my youngest daughter, JULIA FERNANDES, has been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease. She is a senior at the University of Pittsburgh.

As her mother, you can only imagine the amount of worry that this has brought into my life. Having her so far away has made it even harder. Luckily, I've gathered some very helpful coping skills in my later years that have helped me through the process. One of them was knowing that there is frequently a silver lining to many of life's challenges that come upon us. To name a few, her health struggle has brought us even closer together and has delivered us both to the doorstep of the many wonders and lessons about the mind, body, spirit connection.

I will be forever grateful for all that I have personally learned from her through her journey. She has been an incredible inspiration to me, especially in her most challenging moments.

For anyone you know that might be interested in and comforted by her story, it is here.  

With love,
Louise

Making Lemonade

My niece, Vira, posted this on her Instagram last week. So good! I've said I've been busy before and haven't explained why. Just busy taking care of me. The best kind of busy. No explanation needed to take time out for ourselves. No explanation needed anytime really, for anything.

How wonderfully empowering is this?

My nice, Vira, is an American recording artist. Her music has been featured in commercials for BMW, Coke-Zero and NBC Universal. Her latest song, Last Ride, is out and I love it. Vira comes from the Sanskrit word for hero and the Greek/Latin word for truth. She is one of my of biggest inspirations.

I am off today for a weekend away with two very new friends. Some of you may remember my dear friend Liz, who died a few months ago. These two friends were lifelong friends of hers, whom I met only once before her death.

This weekend, we will make some lemonade out of lemons. <3 <3 <3

Sending love and light,

Louise

.

Message from the Sky

The older I grow, the more I love astrology.

I take it with a grain of salt but usually find it pretty fascinating.

There is a message in this full moon for all of us.

Happy lunar eclipse everyone,

Louise

Simply Simple

Sixty-four year old make-up artist, Cindy Joseph, got her first modeling job the same day she cut off her last bit of colored hair and went all gray.

I love what she shares here about the beauty of aging and the make-up line she created called Boom, which is the first cosmetic line to celebrate aging, instead of covering it up.

I also love what she shares at 8:15 about how when we are revved up about life, how it changes the dewiness to our complexion.

More on Cindy's line and great philosophy here.

The Wholeness of Who We Are

This week, a beautiful clip by Elisa Romeo from Hay House Radio.

The soul is the wholeness of who we are,

The wisest and most loving part of us.

The part of us that really matters

and lasts forever.

The Other Secret

The secret is to keep doing things we love to do.

I'm finding however that some of the things I've always loved to do seem to have had the wind blown out of them a little as I've grown older. Like it's time to move on and discover new things to love.

Are you finding this too?

I made my first vision board ever this month. Mr. Fix-It and I each made our own. I've always hesitated making one because I am more of a "be here now" person and don't think a whole lot about the future. But I surprised myself as I thought to include a list of simple life goals and things I want to get better at- like being a better listener and not taking things personally. Gosh, as a mom and a wife, is this ever a hard one to get over, but I can honestly say I've made a little headway already.

Also on my board is a reminder to always provide myself with plenty of flowers, music and human touch.

Oh and one more thing,

at least one daily dose of chocolate.

Love. Chain. Dance

Rose of Sharon

I've received news that the docu-ad has been completed and should be online SOON! It has been a sometimes excruciating 8 week wait but its release is perfect timing perhaps, with the Olympics commencing this Friday.

Not really excruciating, but when I didn't hear an update for a few weeks, I began to think that maybe I had ended up on the editing room floor and they were afraid to tell me.

I know, I know....

What we think about, we become...

We are what we think...

I tried not to go there but sometimes I did.

Anyway, I won't see the ad until it is launched...

I feel so...I don't know what...naked?

But mostly excited.

On another note-

I am probably one of the last people to get on board with the not-so-delicious, but very nutritious, kale craze.

It's been in our garden for many summers. If someone else prepares it, I will eat it, but I've officially turned the corner (which my farmer daughter will no doubt be very happy about).

Thank you for planting something I didn't like honey, it worked.

Check out this yummy Super Summer Kale Salad. ( I add only 1/4 cup of sugar).

Also this week if you haven't seen it, 42 American contemporary choreographers link together on a very cool, chain love letter dance.

Living in a Fishbowl

So here is the rest of the story:


I didn't want to write about this before as there were two other people chosen to have docu-ads made about their life, to help launch the new product. They hadn't completed their filming until now.

One of them is a mid-lifer up in Canada who is a outdoors man, fisherman, and who likes to tell stories and ride motorcycles.

The other person is Samantha Richardson Alday, who lives in Alabama and is 47 years-old. Sam is a colon cancer survivor since the age of 29, who has been able to change her life with fitness. The ad agency put her in touch with me, as she was having the same pre-filming anxieties that I had. The first thing I said to her on the phone was "Sam we are SO having a bizarre parallel experience." It was really good to connect with her.

So now that her filming is done I can divulge what I didn't know was happening during my own filming- (that I was very happy not to know- until after the filming was over):

On the first morning of the shoot, Lauren Sally, the creative director, took my daughter out on the porch and asked her how I was doing.  I think my daughter explained that I was a little stressed, and hadn't been sleeping well, but that I was basically coping okay. Lauren then said to her, " I am going to tell you a little secret and you are not to tell your mom what it is until the filming is over- when I say "cut" to the cameramen, the cameras don't stop rolling. This is when I will get the most candid, natural side of her."

Omgoddie.

So it really was like being on reality TV.

And even when the cameras weren't around, I very often still had a hidden microphone on me that was capable of picking up every word I said. Or at least John, the audio guy could hear everything I said (and probably did?). One time I came out of the bathroom and said, "Oh my goodness, you just heard everything that happened in there didn't you?" He just smiled.

I would also forget that I had a mic on me, as did Liz Caven, the production manager. At one point we paused to firm up the parameters of my contract/agreement with the ad agency, in privacy, out in the mud room and I imagine the audio guy heard this whole conversation(?).

Oh well- I guess he has some insider information.

But the story doesn't end here.

Remember how I said that two branding people came from the food company on the 2nd day of filming and sat out on our front porch?

It didn't occur to me to wonder what they were doing out there, but after awhile I did. When I looked out during a break, they were watching everything that was going on inside the house on a monitor.

So crazy! - but understandable. They were there to keep an eye on things.

When picking out what color tanktop  I was going to wear for the next scene, the branding people took photos of me in the two different color options, sent them to headquarters, got the answer and the color decision was  made.

Pronto. Just like that.

Anyway, I decided when I took on this job that I was going to be an open book. I decided to just be myself and tell my story, even the struggles that I have faced in life, like having had an eating disorder in college and what that was all about and how I struggled academically because of undiagnosed ADD.

So I am not upset about the fish bowl I was in. It was just part of the creative process. I get it. Being a creative person myself I guess helps me to understand this perhaps.

It's all good. I totally felt like I was in good hands and continue to be in good hands, with all the footage they shot of me and now own. Part of this is my trust in Lauren- but the other part is just my comfort in myself and that I am not someone to hide who I am.

But still- having my story land on the market in mid-July is a bit scary.

What elements of those 2 eleven hour days will end up in my docu-ad?

This I will have to wait and see-

and keep my fingers crossed that the great experience that I had, continues.

Day Two

It's been hard to sit down and write this self-centered post after hearing about the very sad situation in Orlando this week. Writing it seems so very frivolous, next to all the pain that has affected so many people in the wake of the shootings. My heart and love goes out to all the victims and their loved ones.

My heart goes out to all of us.


Day Two of the Shoot:

7am: We have an early start to the day. The night prior, before we parted, creative director, Lauren Sally, asked me what it was that I would like to discuss the next day that we hadn't already. Gosh...I thought for a minute, it was becoming hard to remember all that we had already talked about as Lauren had asked me questions, almost constantly, throughout the first day of filming- often repeating the same ones, reaching perhaps for new or deeper answers.

I finally said, "I would like to discuss the beauty of allowing ourselves to age naturally and the ebb and flow of a long marriage."

Scene 1: Cooking in the kitchen. While I have my hair and make-up done, Liz Caven, the production manager, measures all the ingredients into small bowls for the granola recipe that I am about to make on camera.

I emerge with a new hairdo, looking like the suburban housewife, that I am always trying to avoid being.

But I kind of like the new look.

After I make the granola and put it in to bake, I stand at the oven and Lauren interviews me in depth, for the second time. At the end she asks me what it is that I would like to say, that I haven't. What comes to mind first is how grateful I am to have been chosen for this project. That I've been writing Lines of Beauty for 6 years and am blown away that she found it and has basically asked me to tell my life's story. I thanked her for the acknowledgement. I am near tears at this point, probably with a visible quivering lip as well.

9am: As I am pulling myself together, suddenly the doorbell rings. I feel alarmed. Who the heck is at the door? Is it UPS? A neighbor? I feel as though we are all on this secret mission and have been caught.

It turns out that it is the two people from the food company, who are in charge of branding. They have flown in for the day, to keep an eye on things. Heading into this project they are one of the things that I was most worried about. Are they going to arrive in suits and be all corporate and controlling- and make me even more nervous?

Nope.

They are in jeans, and seem laid back and friendly. They unpack the new product that we are launching, go out on the front porch and I almost forget that they are there.

Scene 2: Product planting. The product is placed on my kitchen counter, in the background. I've never tried a nutritional drink because I've always assumed that they are disgusting- things that elderly people drink, that are full of crap. This one however is a cleaned-up version with lots of vitamins and minerals. I take a sip and it reminds me of chocolate milk. I like it so much that I drink the whole thing and stick another one in the fridge so that I can try the next one chilled.

Scene 3: Lauren then announces that its time to blog.

WHAT?

I am shocked, as this scene was not on the agenda that they had sent and my office is very messy and has not been cleaned. I'm temporarily horrified, but they push away all the tax papers and mess, and in an instant, we carry on.

Lauren asks me to pull up a few of my favorite posts. I draw a total blank, as I am so caught off guard, but decide to write into the blog's search box  the word "mom" and then the word "fitness". I find a few of my favorite posts. I get through reading the fitness post, which is about a very inspirational 92-year-old swimmer who I met, but when it comes to reading the post about my mom, which is about how much older people need to be touched, it takes every ounce of me to not ball. I pause and look down at Lauren, who is seated on the floor off to the right of my desk, but out of the way of the cameras. Her eyes are filled with tears too.

I take an even deeper breath- it feels like reality TV but it is all so real.

Scene 4: All 9 of us get into several cars and head to film a walking scene, where we meet up with my friend Brenda, who is a women's entrepreneurial coach. I bring along another friend's rescue dog and we walk around a reservoir, with microphones hidden on us. Prompted by Lauren, we discuss the importance of having close friendships. We also discuss where in life we stop ourselves from doing things, out of fear. We discuss many different subjects, which all seem a blur to me at this point. One thing I do know is that much of this scene is shot by the cameras at a distance, and Brenda and I almost forget that they are there. We almost forget, only until Lauren yells, "Turn around and come back this way!" or when she shouts out another question for us to answer.

Scene 5  1:30pm: No time for lunch- our next shoot is at an outdoor community pool. I am so glad that I put "the product" in a cooler and brought it along so that I can infuse myself with strength before they ask me to swim two lengths of butterfly at a time, over and over again. They have no idea how hard this is for a 55-year-old to do. I pretend however that I am temporarily 15 and manage through it, without my wheels falling off- thanks to the nutritional drink. They film me under water again here, as well as put a harness on me, where they connect a go-pro camera to my chest.

What the?

I am as happy as a dolphin.

3:00pm: We finally break at the pool for another take-out lunch.

Scene 6: Back at the house we shoot the scene, that will be the lead up to the run, that we shot out in Concord the day before. I come down from the second floor, stop at the bottom to put on my sneakers and tie them, do some stretches and then run out the front door. You'd think that this would be a quick scene to film but to get the camera angle right and not have me fumble when I tie my laces, requires many retakes, which I am very happy to do.

I know that we are about to conclude another eleven hour day and that soon everyone will be packed up and that I will be sad to see them go.

Before they leave, Lauren takes time to show me some footage of the the last two days.

It looks really good.

I suddenly feel like I am about to say good-bye to my new summer camp friends, whom I don't want to leave.

I  walk out into the drive-way, hug them, thank them and bid them farewell.

I suddenly feel as I kind of did back in 1988, after our wedding was over.

So sad to have the festivities end.

So I head-out and celebrate with Brenda for dinner, which begins with a very large, extra-dry martini and many olives.:-)

Next week's post-

The things that I haven't yet been able to divulge :-)