The Age-Old Question

No, I'm not talking about, "Does this dress make me look fat?" I'm talking about the other one. "Am I too old for this?" Back when the answer was never "no" I thought it was a stupid question. I thought that if you liked it, you should wear it. But then on a trip to England, I saw lots of high school girls in plaid uniforms wearing little tiaras. I couldn't resist. I had dreamed of a wearing a tiara ever since I was a little girl. But every time I tried to put it on, something held me back. I only wore it once, to the Solstice Festival, where anyone can get away with anything (or, famously, nothing). Then it sat in a drawer for years until I gave it to my five year old.

This weekend I have a hair appointment. This is a big deal. In grad school I used to change my hair color every quarter. In a day-long process I dyed my ass-length hair 3 different shades of purple to celebrate when we bought our house. I have had my hair black & blue, lavender, various stripey combinations, Galadriel white – you name it. But this will be my first salon appointment since we brought Rose Red home four years ago. Once I went to the Gary Manuel training salon, and I've had half a dozen trims at Rudy's, but no real hairstyling in over four years.

Now I am going to Vain, to see someone who specialized in my hair type, and I'm all aflutter. I am full of big ideas that I know I won't follow through on, because I'm still a mom with two small kids who doesn't own a blow dryer. I won't do color, because I don't go in often enough to deal with the roots. But there is one dramatic, colorful trend that requires no maintenance. It's just the sort of thing I would have gone for back in the day, if it had existed then. I'm talking about feather extensions.

So, if my use of the phrase "back in the day" wasn't enough to tip you off, here it comes. The trick is - I had never seen this trend before my daughters' nanny showed up with blue feathers in her hair. If you first notice a trend on the nanny, does that mean you are too old for it?

Unfortunately, I'm afraid so.

If anyone has evidence to the contrary, say, pictures of chic middle-aged women with feather extensions, please share it with me. Double points if your example works in a conservative environment like local government. I would love permission to tie brightly colored feathers in my hair.


 

China’s Plan Follow-up

I dug around a little, and found this work report presented by China's Premier Wen Jiabao. It summarizes accomplishments of the last 5 years, but does not actually peg them to the initial goals. Still, he does specifically acknowledge a couple of issues where China was not making any accomplishments. So it does make me think that the 5 Year Plans are genuine planning documents and not propaganda, even if their contents are carefully discussed.

I was especially impressed by the following passage:

We actively yet prudently carried out the reform of the pharmaceutical and healthcare systems, and completed a basic medical insurance system for non-working urban residents and a new rural cooperative medical care system, which benefit 432 million working and non-working urban residents and 835 million rural residents.


I don't know if I would be satisfied with this program if I was one of China's urban immigrants. But I still found it impressive that live-and-let-die China is working towards universal health care when we Americans can't even agree that it is a benefit to society.

60 Years of Planning

China has released its 12^th five year plan. That's an impressive 60 yrs of comprehensive planning from a country that is best known for tumult during the last century.  It is very heartening to see Chinese leadership focusing on the environmental impact of their breakneck growth. Of course the article doesn't talk much about China's ability in the past to live up to its goals in previous plans, and since I haven't been following closely myself, I can't speak to how likely this one is to predict China's course over the next five years.  But, it does serve as a reminder to me to continue reflecting on how I can live my own life more strategically.  Maybe it's just the bureaucrat in me, but I like the idea of having overarching goals that guide decision making over the long term, rather than blindly stumbling around or dreaming big without any idea how to get there.
 

Blog On, Garth

March got a little hairy, and April wasn't much better. I was kind of embarrassed to pick up again after six weeks. But an incident the other day changed my thinking. A coworker of mine just got her book published. On her new website she talked about going to writers' retreats. I looked up one of the retreats she described, and there was a workshop that sounded interesting. So I looked up the instructor's website. She was a successful freelance writer with a published book, teaching at a respected retreat center…and her last blog post was on December 10, 2010.

Her book was a memoir about her yoga practice and how it taught her to accept the messy ad hocness (my word, I'm sure she could do better) of life. So I thought, "Hey, I do yoga, I write, I get overwhelmed by life and go ages without penning so much as a blog post. I'm practically a pro. So accept the mess and blog on.
Of course, any excuse will get me doubting. So this is also a good time to ask the question, "Why?"
For me, one reason is that daily practice of any skill is worthwhile. Yoga, meditation, martial arts, sports, music, writing and just about anything you care about enough to do well are all improved by daily practice. I write everyday at work, but there is real value (I think) in writing about topics you pick yourself. Blogging lets you test ideas, and at the same time build discipline in your practice. When I started blogging earlier this year, I thought it would be a chance to have more than just a passing thought about some of the Big Questions of Life that I am usually to busy for since having kids. But a couple of weeks in, it became pretty obvious that all of my questions are pretty much about my kids.

So be it. Accept the mess and blog on. Mommy bloggers are much mocked, and I know that there a lot of pretty bad blogs out there. But I think the mockery stems as much from latent sexism as from any inherent lameness in the genre. Blogging allows a group of people who can be pretty isolated a way to communicate and connect with others. It can be a vital outlet for creativity and self expression. It can generate income for some of the better or more savvy in the group. And it fits into a lifestyle that doesn't have a lot of room to fit much more of anything.

This may be just another messy mommy blog, but I will continue to broadcast from my basement, rich in movie references and shallow in Deep Thoughts.

Blog on, Garth.