Finals week and I am tired!

On Thursday I took an online final that was a mere 35 questions long. Fortunately I knew my way through the content and got an A (94.5 %) on that particular test. This weekend I have another one to take and on this content, I am not so self-assured. I’d settle for a C, just to get it over with!

Why do tests make us crazy? I know I’m not alone in this. Some folks have test anxiety so severe that they actually need medication to simply get through an exam. I’m not anxious, I just don’t like taking tests – and, maybe I’m just old, because now that most tests are electronic, I feel a little more handicapped when taking them.

I have two or perhaps three certification exams looming in my future and in today’s world those tests are all online as well. You generally have to go to a testing center to have the privilege of sitting for them (after you pay several hundred dollars) and they are timed by a proctor. The first one comes up this spring and I am not looking forward to it. The second one will occur when I complete my coursework for the Family Nurse Practitioner certification. Hopefully, that will be in the summer of 2010. Then, if I have any endurance left in me, I am considering the pursuit of a Child/Family Psychiatric Mental Health NP certification (this could take another 2 years), so I don’t expect the test will be on my calendar until 2012. Maybe if I spread them out (one every 2 years or so) they won’t seem so overwhelming!

Life is full of tests. Most of them don’t occur online, however. They happen when you make a presentation at work and everyone is judging your project, examining your worth to the organization and either feeling very supportive and proud to have you as their colleague or jealous as hell if you did a good job! Other tests are more subtle –

• What did you do with that Christmas gift Aunt Catherine sent you (you know, the one you hated!)? Because, after all, she is coming for New Year’s dinner!
• Where did you put your copies of those trip receipts you’d never thought you’d need? Well you need them now, because there was a small fire in the accounting department and all the work in Cynthia’s in-basket (your expense report included) is in ashes!
• “How old are you grandma?” seems like an innocent enough question unless it is going into a report for school that notifies a whole portion of the disbelieving world that you are indeed over the age of “senior citizen” and deserving of a discount on nearly everything retail.

What tests are facing you? Will you worry that you look “fatter” when you see your friends and family over the holidays? Will you still be in love with the fellow you met at that conference last year, but haven’t seen (except in e-mail photos) in over 9 months? Will your Red Velvet Cake hold up to grandma’s standards at the holiday dinner you’re hosting this year?

We all have tests. My advice? Take a deep breath, give it your best effort, and realize, in a few years (maybe just weeks or months) no one will even care how you did on your test!

The Joys of Travel

This weekend I get to venture to one of my favorite parts of the country, North Carolina. It is not that I’ve spent a great deal of time there, but that one of my very best girlfriends lives there and I will get to spend time with her!

As I get ready for this trip I notice that preparation in mid-life is different than it was just a decade or so ago. This week, in getting ready for my trip, I saw my physician, made appointments for two steroid injections (knee & spine), renewed my prescriptions and got a new one for those “power surges” that hit you in mid-life. Hopefully, on this new drug, I will be able to sleep through the night without having to “cool the fire within” every hour or so.

Also in getting ready to leave, I had to clear my desks – yes two desks, one at work and one at home. With work projects in fairly safe array (or in good hands while I’ll be gone) and school projects on track for appropriate completion for the end of the semester, I believe I will be able to get on that plane worry-free.

The trip comes in the form of a conference for work. The best news was that it would be in my girlfriend’s home-town. Two days with her, two days for work-related business and I should be ready to return to both my desks refreshed and renewed.

Travel is an interesting thing. It is always on my “wish list” when I tabulate the things I want to do in life yet, when it comes to actually taking a trip, a million headaches come to mind. Many of them airport related: Do I have all my liquids in less than 3-ounce bottles? Remember to wear shoes that are easy to slip off and on! Shall I pay to check my bag or schlep it on the plane in the hopes that some tall person will help me heft it up into the over-head storage compartment?

Then there are the ordinary woes of just being away from home: Should I take a bathing suit for the pool (do I want to be seen by strangers looking like a beached whale?)? Do I have the right clothes for the activities; will I need a dressy outfit; is there a banquet; can I wear jeans?

And finally, there is the question that arises anytime we go to see an old friend, especially one we don’t get to visit very often – what will she think of me? Will she care that I’ve put on a few pounds (Few is a delicate word!)? Will she hate my punky, spiky hair? Will we have enough in common to even hold an interesting conversation?

All these things roam through my head, but as I zip up my suitcase and scoop up my trench coat, I remember how every other visit with her has been (visits that go back nearly 40 years) and all I feel is warmth because she and I never care about each other’s looks, we always have enough to talk about – usually well into the night! We are old friends, in the most generous definition of the term, and I am so very excited to get to see her again.

Boomer Women, Finding Our Way in Retirement

Harvard researchers recently report that we boomer women are less married, more divorced, more childless and more alone than any prior generation of women. These worrisome facts add financial and healthcare challenges to an already expanded life expectancy for all of us born in the baby boom that ran from 1946 to 1964.

Boomer women are at risk for having inadequate retirement savings, mainly because, like most women, we’ve been in and out of the workforce managing family life while we juggled career milestones along the way. Women also are notorious for being slow to take advantage of the 401 (k or b) retirement savings products when they were introduced, so our net savings in IRAs, work retirement accounts and pensions are generally inadequate.

Boomer women are at risk for requiring a disproportionate amount of long-term care since women routinely outlive men, and boomer women will be no different, our numbers as we reach our 80s may overwhelm the healthcare resources we have come to depend upon in the USA. We’ll take up more long-term care beds and, because many of us did not marry and even among those who did, many did not produce children, we may be lacking a family caregiver who will oversee our health needs as we age.

What’s a woman to do? Harvard researchers recommend several strategies that I, for one, have begun to take to heart. They remind women now approaching retirement to consider:

• Know what your Social Security income projections. Each year, the government sends an update indicating what your retirement benefits from Social Security are likely to be. Remember those (downward) income adjustments for being widowed or divorced women can be significant. Women need to educate ourselves and plan accordingly
• Work a few years longer. Extending worked years by even five years can push up Social Security benefits, increase your time for making considerable retirement contributions and sustain health insurance coverage until Medicare is available.
• Save more retirement money. Utilize the generous retirement contribution rules for those over 50. Put away as much as your income will allow while there is no penalty for doing so and while your funds can still gain interest.
• Own your home. By adding just one additional payment each year, you can shave a decade off the length of your mortgage. Whether you purchased early or late in life, this one asset can provide housing, much needed capital or simply equity for a reverse mortgage as you age.
  

For more information on what you can do to protect your financial future, see this report available on line:

Baby Boomer Women Secure Futures or Not?
Edited By Paul Hodge, Chair, Global Generations Policy InstituteDirector, Harvard Generations Policy Programhttp://www.genpolicy.com/
Available at: http://www.genpolicy.com/freecopy/

Reinventing myself in mid-life. . .

Researchers tell us that this is what we do; we reinvent ourselves because naturally life changes after mid-life. Not only do we get old, but we loose roles we’ve had for a long time (Mom or Dad) and gain new ones we may or may not be prepared for (Mother-in-law, Grandmother).

Some of us do this very well and a great deal of interest (along with several articles) is emerging about how we “boomers” will reinvent not only ourselves but the meaning of retirement.

In my case, I will strive to be as creative as possible, but I have a sense that the economic realities of life will play a much greater part in the direction I take than will my sense of adventure, freedom or wanderlust.

So far, I’ve been going about my reinvention in a very pragmatic way.

• I came back to pediatrics (where I really have not practiced in over 25 years). This returning to my practice “roots” is not something I ever intended to do but the opportunity that presented itself was too good to resist.
• I went back to school. Learning has been a life-long endeavor and something I truly love. That said learning in mid-life and in a new century is not so easy. I am surrounded by fellow students who are far more energetic who and have well honed skills for the technological demands of higher education today! I alas, do not.
• I married (again), something I thought I would never do. But his son was about to have a son and I simply didn’t want to be known as “Grandpa’s squeeze” – I wanted the title, Grandma.
• I bought a new house! Something I have not done in nearly 30 years. I’ve lived in all kinds of homes but I wanted a new house and in mid-life I found one, customized just for me. I expect I will be there for quite a while!
• I consolidated my retirement monies and now only have two main financial repositories for my IRAs and my 401 K. Naturally, when you’re as old as I am there are bound to be little bits of money here and there (I think I have a pension with about $200 in it!), but now, two phone calls or a visit to two websites and I know where I stand (or perhaps, fall).
• I started to write. Not that I have not always had a love for words and some hopes about writing, but now I set aside time to do it. I go to classes and discussion groups to improve my writing. I look for opportunities to have my work critiqued.

However, I know I’m not done. There are things I need to do that I haven’t gotten to yet. Certainly, a portion of that is procrastination. Another portion is surely a choice about where I will spend my time and with whom.

So what’s left? These things for sure:

• I must commit to regular exercise. I need both strength training and cardio if I am to head into old age with a sense of wellness and wellbeing.
• I must de-clutter. Everywhere I turn I see the burden of postponed decisions – debris in every corner of my life and space. It is time to really clean house (physically and metaphorically).
• I must live consciously. I have no more time for the anesthesia of hurry and over-booking. I want no more running from hither to yon, I want to walk, listen to the breeze in the trees, smell the flowers, and hear the birds. I want to revel in the richness of life and relationships, not merely rush on by. I want to enjoy the journey – whether I get to the destination or not!

So, that’s enough. I think if I live long enough to do all that, I’ll be able to sit down and craft a new list. I can’t imaging running out of “things to do” but I want very much to make my focus not just what I do, but who I am being and becoming for this second half of life!

When did I first know I was a Democrat?

The other day, a comentator on Public Radio asked a group attending the Democratic National Convention, “when did you first know you were a democrat?” and the question got me thinking, when did I first know I was a democrat?

I hate now, to admit that I voted Republican as many times as I did, but my excuse is that I was raised in a Republican home, and until I was about 30, I didn’t understand much about politics. My parents were very involved in politics when I was very small. I actually remember Eisenhower’s second run for office in 1956 and I was only four at the time. We had a TV and it was on every day from dawn until late into the night if the campaign was being televised.

My father worked as a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Tavern Association and as a result he knew his way around state politics. I remember events at pubs and corner bars when I was very young where my parents were working to get someone elected to some local post. For me, it was always a chance to hear the music, dance, throw confetti and drink those “kid cocktails” that the bartender would keep handing to me. It was exciting and fun and I was part of the action – even if I didn’t know what all the action was about.

In my early voting years, I think I must have voted for the names I knew and, I confess, I knew more about the Republican names than the Democratic names. I even voted for Regan, probably twice, and that would have been what, 1980 and 1984? This was probaby where my disillusionment hit me. I was working with the AIDS community at the time (1986 through 1992) and I realized that we had a president who not only couldn’t deal with the healthcare crisis of the day, he couldn’t even say the word AIDS. It was as though, if he didn’t acknowledge it, it didn’t exist. As a result, neither did any significant funding.

So, that’s when I knew I had to be a democrat. Clinton made that easy – he was young and charismatic. Gore made it logical, after all, he’d served with Clinton. Kerry was harder to vote for – so I voted against Bush. And in this year’s election, I admit, I was a Clinton advocate, but I can and will vote for Obama.

A word about wishing, wanting and hoping for Hillary… I doubt that in my lifetime there will be another woman candidate as gutsy as Hillary. She can stand up to the boys, she can even stand up to Bill, and that’s saying something! She made her marriage stick (something I couldn’t do in my first marriage) against enormous odds and horrible public commentary. She raised an amazing daughter (remember those early pictures of Chelsea?) who has grown to be beautiful, focused and ready to take on her own world. I may not always like Hillary, but I admire her and would have happily voted for her to be our president.

Oh well, water under the bridge. Let’s consider Barack Obama…

First, he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii – right away, he gets extra points for that! He’s 9 years younger than I, but that’s good. He’ll be 47 when elected and 55 when he leaves office (surely we’ll give him two terms) which is very young, and if he’s even half as charasmatic as Bill Cliniton, he’ll be headed for important work even as a “former president.”

Also, he’s the product of a single-parent home. Well, Clinton was too, so he’s not the first, but I like the idea that women can produce a presidential offece-worthy son even when up against the hardships of doing it alone. Perhaps it will make us take a longer, national look at the plight of the single mother and the (way too) many fatherless sons in our communities!

His mom, Ann Dunham, a White American from Kansas, died in 1995 of ovarian cancer. She was 52. That also endeared this man to me. Having worked for the Women’s Cancer Center at the Univerisity of Minnesota, I know this disease (ovarian cancer is the most covert of killers). Perhpaps this will also focus Obama’s attention on women’s cancer and add to the NIH’s coffers for the research on these diseases.

Barack Obama went to Occidental College, one of the oldest liberal arts colleges on the West Coast, kown for its academic rigor and its diverse student body; to Columbia University in New York where he emerged with a B.A. in political science with a focus in international relations; and to Yale University where he studied law. I like a man of letters. I also appreciate that he has put his education to good use, doing good work for people far less fortunate than he.

Has he made some mis-steps? Sure, but when I think of my own mistakes, I know it is good I will never run for office – the scrutiny of our candidates’ early choices is merciless, and done by pundits who, if their own histories were explored would be embarassed beyond belief, I’m sure!

Okay, enough soap-boxing for this morning.
Am I voting democratic? You bet.
Do I hope Barack is smart enough to put Hillary in a cabinet position that permits her to use her talents nationally and not just for New York? Yes, I do.
Will I be working locally to get him elected.? I will.
What will you be doing this fall?

School Daze

School starts this week and I am scrambling to understand the various connect-abilities expected of me as I take two courses at two separate universities. The software seems to be the same however the access to the applications for these two different educational purposes is apparently a major undertaking. Oh well, I’m hoping to have it worked out in time for class.


I was thinking about why I go to school in my fifties -- not something most adults are inclined to pursue -- and I guess it is in part because I love to learn. It is also because I love to work. Given that all my credentials are from the last century, it seems I will have a much better chance of staying employed (on my terms) well into my sixties if I have a few 21st century credentials. Hence, I find myself once again a student.


Both of the programs in which I am participating advise that the learner work no more than 0.8 or 32 hours a week in order to accomplish all the work that the courses require. Hmmmm…not likely to happen in my case, so I guess I’ll be up reading early and studying late while burning the midnight oil.


My husband was describing to me a couple he knows (and feels bad for) who seem to be, each of them, and the two of them together, in a deep habitual rut. They work, eat, watch TV and sleep -- then they get up and start the pattern all over again. They seem tremendously older (alas, not wiser) than their chronological age and overwhelmingly listless for folks who are so young.


He has advised the young man in question to get some exercise, turn off the TV and establish a solid sleep pattern. That’s good for openers, but along the way these two (as they are a couple) need to be managing their nutrition, their brain plasticity, their bone & joint flexibility and their finances if they really plan to be healthy! Today I suggested to hubby that one or both of them might want to pursue some education since it is apparent that the degrees they have acquired did not prepare them for the earning potential toward which they wish to live. His tongue-in-cheek reply was that neither of them would believe they have any time. Sad.


As for me, I will be done with one of my endeavors before the end of the year -- I am becoming certified as a Wound Care nurse. This entails some education and roughly 50 hours of clinical experience with a preceptor who will mentor me through my hands-on experience.


The other course of study will likely take until the spring of 2010 at which time I should emerge ready to sit for the Family Nurse Practitioner certification examination, something my particular Master’s degree (some 30 years ago) did not prepare me to do.


Most co-workers ask me the typical question: “Then what?” And, while I wish I could give a definitive, precise answer, I can’t. I suspect I’ll practice where I now work. I envision a role that expands to permit me to add to my current administrative duties a host of clinical jobs that allow me to move from office to bedside to clinic room and back to the office with relative ease. I’m old (56 remember?) so I’m not holding out the hope that I’ll become a whiz-bang specialist in the years of clinical practice remaining to me. Even though I work in a world of specialists, I imagine I will become something of a jack of all trades, able to fill in wherever the organization needs me. That flexibility along with the diversity it would offer will certainly be enough to hold my attention for years to come.


For this week however, I’m going to have to master my usernames and passwords to multiple gateways just to gain access to the preliminary course materials I’ll be expected to master within the next few days!

Summer Adventures with a Five-year Old

It isn’t just being in my mid-fifties, peri-menopausal and overweight that leaves me tired. This summer, I agreed to make two (not one, but two) trips with a five-year old grandson. Now that’s enough to make anyone tired, and cranky!

The trips are done (may the heavens be praised!) and I am exhausted. So tired in fact, that I am actually looking forward to the semester’s work and school schedule as a return to normalcy! Here’s what I have to report about our summer adventures. . .

Duluth may look like a big city, but it functions like a BIG small town. We arrived in town mid-day on Saturday only to learn that:

• The accommodations we’d planned to use were clearly not going to work!
• The lines for the event we’d come to see (Tall Ships in the harbor) were averaging five-hour waits!

Neither of these bits of information spelled “good news” from the standpoint of having a five-year old in tow. Waiting is definitely not his strong suite and, along with that, patience is definitely not mine. Hubby dear was a willing participant and, I must add, a great babysitter while I was on the phone for over an hour searching for a place to lay our heads.

We worked it out (as resourceful people always do) but suffice it to say, Duluth, the town proper, did not make our access to options particularly easy. We found a motel; bare-bones and definitely not someplace we’d choose if there were choices. And, we decided to do our darnedest to be first in line on Sunday morning, even if that meant getting up before the crack of dawn.

Hence, our merry band made the best of our time together. The grandson saw some lovely sites, climbed some metal sculptures, got generally dirty as a five-year old can get and ate reasonably well given he was with two old and travel-worn visitors to this Never-Never-Land.

The second trip was the Big Train Ride, or perhaps more well stated, the ride on the big train! This was an all-day Saturday affair that also had a few hitches in it. What looked at the start of things as a well made plan, turned out to be an endurance test that finally ended late Sunday evening.

We began our journey by car, driving from our Southwest Minneapolis suburb to the Eastern edge of St. Paul where the Amtrak station is well disguised as a wear-house or a homeless shelter. Arriving 45 minutes ahead of our planned departure, we ended up waiting over an hour in St. Paul due to unexpected and unavoidable train delays.

Once on the train, we found three seats in relative proximity and made friends with a jovial conductor/steward who immediately presented our grandson with an honorary, your-first-trip-on-a-train cap which he proudly wore for the rest of the weekend. We ate breakfast in the dining car, sat and watched the scenery from the snack lounge, and whiled away the time with crayons as the train jostled down the track toward LaCrosse, Wisconsin, our exotic destination for the day.

Once in Wisconsin, we found the train station to be something out of a Harry Potter story. It was oak and brass with an ancient clock that still kept time and welcomed weary travelers such as we. Plus, it had restrooms large enough to accommodate an adult and a child which is very useful when one of the travelers still doesn’t quite have the hang of all the steps involved in assuring hygiene in public places.

We found a taxi cab, already burdened with passengers, whose driver assured us she would return for us and take us to our destination – the local scenic tour trolley. She did return but, alas, dropped us off at the bus station, not the trolley stop and so we missed that connection. Plan “B” turned out to be a walk down to the river where a blow-out celebration of summer was in play with sandcastles, games, a circle-the-park play-train ride and several of those brightly-colored, enormous, blown-up, jump-and-bounce energy expenders. These behemoths were our salvation because they served to wear the five-year old down and keep his energy in check throughout the day.

Having avoided all the sugary options that filled the riverfront park, we set out at the end of our afternoon to locate a real dinner. To the adults, this meant finding a place where libations could be sipped and composure reassembled in relative quiet. We found just such a place and had a lovely round of drinks while waiting for a table. There, we hurried our way through a meal meant to be savored but enjoyed the flavors anyway.

The restaurant hostess called a cab for us and we were off to the antique train station to wait for our locomotive which was, once again, unavoidably delayed. The best part of this waiting was seeing the five-year old’s eyes light up when he saw the train engine approaching. He had not seen the front of the train on the earlier trip, so waiting for it, seeing it arrive and finally boarding it was an unusual pleasure to watch him enjoy.

The ride home was mostly endured in darkness. Proximal seats were more difficult to find and when we did find three nearby each other, they were across from the doorways that permitted access from our car to the next. Each time these doors opened the temperature changed and the noise increased by several decibels. All that aside, the five-year old made good use of his time drawing and coloring pictures of trains, boats, cars and, strangely enough, cactus.

Arriving back in St. Paul around eleven at night, we scooped our weary five-year old up and got him into his car-seat. The journey home was mostly traffic-less and we arrived tired and dirty but relatively undamaged. We slept until eight in the morning (a luxury in our house any day) and used the first two hours of our Sunday to read the paper, watch the news, fix some breakfast, shower and dress us all for church, in downtown Minneapolis.

We are Catholic, our grandson’s parents are not so, going to mass is always an interesting adventure. Fortunately the enormous church organ with its beautiful and bellowing tones captured his attention right away. And while I would not say the hour flew by, at least it did not seem like a torturous event to him.

Sunday afternoon was devoted to the air-show at the local community airport. Grandpa and grandson lasted two hours at this grand gala and the rest of the afternoon was devoted to napping in an effort to catch up on the rest we all seemed to need to recover from our journeys.

Would I do it all again?

Probably not, unless you give me a few months to recover and ask me when the neck-pain and the bruises have faded. Then only the nostalgia will remain and I, like all the other doting grandparents on the planet, will happily sign up to do some new and exciting adventure with the little guy who reminds me why childhood is so magical.