Category: Self help

Confessions of a 58 year old pirate!

At the ripe old age of 58, I finally achieved my goal of becoming a pirate.

Not the sea-faring, world-traveling kind. Not the eye-patch version — my eyesight is still fine. Not the wooden-leg type either, although I did break my leg a couple of years ago.

No, I’m the scurvy kind.

Yes. Apparently my vitamin C levels are low.

I take a GLP-1 medication to control my insulin levels. I should also be following a healthy diet. But me being me — which apparently means modern-day pirate — I don’t.

I forget to eat.

It’s a problem I’ve always had, even before the GLP injections. Being hypoglycemic never helped. The GLP-1 just made it worse.

And if you think forgetting to eat sounds like a good thing — it isn’t. I get severe stomach acid, my blood sugar goes wild, and I feel nauseous all day.

You would think being an adult and a mother I’d know better.

I do know better.

I just don’t follow my own advice.

When I started bruising easily and healing slowly, I finally spoke to my endocrinologist. Now I drink half a glass of orange juice a day and take supplements.

So pirate it is — at least until my levels are back to normal.

The upside? I don’t need to choose a costume for the next party.

It’s built in.

I Do Not Hear, and He Does Not Listen

A deeply personal essay about sudden hearing loss, marriage, and the invisible gap between sound and understanding.

I like to say that my left ear is for decorative purposes only. It holds my glasses and I can put beautiful jewelry in it — beyond that, nothing more. I simply have no other use for it.

Five and a half years ago, I lost my hearing overnight. I went to bed with severe ringing and woke up to silence.

I saw doctors. I had a brain MRI. They found nothing wrong with my brain — contrary to what my husband thinks. I got the typical solution when no clear diagnosis appears: a virus.

I love the virus diagnosis. It encompasses everything and yet explains absolutely nothing.

My left ear has five percent hearing, which in reality amounts to nothing. Hence, decorative purposes only.

My right ear is slightly better — but only slightly. I wear hearing aids. Good, expensive ones. And yet my hearing will never be the same.

I love it when people say, “But you wear hearing aids — can’t you hear normally?”

No. I can’t.

Hearing aids are not glasses. They do not fix the problem 100%. If anything, they sometimes create more noise.

The world is a very loud place. Very loud.

My brain does not always tolerate the constant sound. In loud places, it takes enormous effort to figure out where sounds are coming from and what people are saying. Sometimes I just want to go home, take out the aids, swallow two painkillers, and sit in silence with the migraine that follows.

Those around us who have not experienced this often don’t understand — even the ones who walked through the hearing loss journey with us.

My husband and I were planning dinner with friends. He suggested a restaurant.

“Yes, it’s nice,” I said. “But I can’t hear anything in there.”

“It’s great,” he replied. “I don’t think it’s loud.”

He is lucky I did not hit him.

I looked at him and asked, “Did you not hear what I just said? I am, after all, the deaf one.”

He repeated himself.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s not loud for you.”

For me, the acoustics are terrible. There’s loud music, dozens of conversations, clattering plates — and I hear everything and nothing all at once. I just sit there, feeling like a decoration. Me and my ear.

I explained myself again. I’m not sure he fully understood. But we’re going somewhere else — somewhere that won’t leave me with a migraine and screaming tinnitus.

It’s funny how I do not hear, and he does not listen.

Maybe funny. Maybe a little sad.

Sobriety Checkpoints and the Curse of an Honest Face

I was stopped at a sobriety checkpoint last night on my way home from an office party.

The officer asked where I was coming from and whether I’d been drinking. I said no. He looked at my face for a beat, smiled, and said, “I believe you. You can go.”

I hadn’t been drinking. I don’t drink alcohol at all. My gastroenterologist suspects I have an alcohol intolerance—alcohol destroys my stomach—and being on a GLP-1 injection only makes the effects worse. So the answer was honest, but the instant acceptance still surprised me.

I found the whole interaction oddly amusing. There were signs well before the stop announcing the checkpoint, so anyone who had been drinking already knew how to avoid the area. Which made me wonder: what was it about my face that made him decide not to look any further?

The amused expression, maybe. It’s gotten me into trouble before. I was once dismissed from jury duty because I apparently failed to conceal my opinion that the defense attorney was an idiot. I forgot my poker face that day.

Gemini says I have an “infectious glow.” My daughter thinks that might be true. I call bullshit.

I thanked the officer and drove on, still amused—once again reminded that my face has a habit of telling the truth before I do.

Redefining Useful

One of my new year resolutions was to strive to do something useful every day. I did not define “useful” on purpose; I decided that useful would be anything that deemed useful to me.

Over the last three or four weeks, I did do a couple of useful things. I took a vacation. I swam with manta rays and snorkeled in the Bahamas. I organized one shelf of my yoga pants. And today, I watered the garden.

To some, all of this might seem menial and not really useful, but to my overwhelmed brain, every one of these things was useful.

My brain has been in overdrive for the last couple of months — family health issues, work, and everyday life. Sleep has not been good, and worry took over.

So taking some time off has been useful, including “just” watering the patio today.

Make your own useful to-do lists. Make sure they work for you. And take mental days as well — trust me, they are useful.

Apparently, Even Socks Tell a Story

Over the last almost two years, I lost a quarter of my body weight. Between the GLP-1 injections, the gym, and Pilates reformer classes, I would love to say it was all thanks to healthy eating—but that wasn’t always the case.

After losing all that weight, I expected to need new clothes: underwear, bras, the usual. What surprised me the most, though, was the fact that I needed new socks.

As I lost weight, my feet actually shrank. They became narrower. My socks, which had apparently stretched to accommodate my old weight, were now loose, stretched out, and uncomfortable.

I naturally have small feet, and socks—unless they’re kids’ sizes—never fit perfectly anyway. Still, I was genuinely surprised to discover that new socks were necessary.

The year is ending, and a new one is beginning in just a couple of days. Many of us go through a mental checklist: what we accomplished, what we struggled with, and what falls somewhere in between.

We usually focus on the obvious big things—getting a promotion, starting a new job, hitting a major milestone.

But just like my socks, we often forget to count the smaller, less obvious successes.

One of my goals this year was to become more organized. Unfortunately, my nature isn’t so easy to change. But my pantry is—and, to my great delight, it’s still organized several months later.

My home office still looks like a mess, but my little “sock/pantry” success counts.

We tend to look only for the big, obvious wins right in front of us. Maybe we need to shift our perspective and start noticing the smaller, unexpected victories too.

26 Pairs of Yoga Pants and a Forced Vacation

There is nothing more fun than getting sick on vacation. Unfortunately, this is not the first time—and probably not the last.

When we went to China, pre-COVID, I came back with a nasty respiratory infection that took three months and antibiotics to clear. In Thailand, again pre-COVID, I had a terrible case of vertigo that completely threw me off. In Hawaii, two months before COVID, I came back with severe bronchitis and almost broke a rib from coughing. And this pattern has just continued through the years.

I am now on a forced vacation. Our workplace goes through a shutdown during the December holidays, and once again, my lungs are not happy. Interestingly, all my symptoms started after getting a flu shot. Coincidence? Maybe.

I had many plans for this shutdown: tidying my home office, planning ahead for 2026 for my side hustles, and going through my closet to donate all the clothes I no longer like or haven’t worn in ages.

Instead, I sat with a cup of tea, a tissue in hand, and felt miserable. Today, I felt a little better and managed to go through one shelf. To my great surprise, I discovered I own 26 pairs of yoga pants. When I told my friend, she asked, “Do you wear them all?”

Of course not, I replied. I wear the same four pairs that are always on top. So six pairs went into the donation pile, three pairs with holes went straight into the trash—without a proper Marie Kondo goodbye. It’s not a lot, but I’m celebrating this small win.

Am I upset that I got sick? Yes. But it did force me to rest and to pause. I watched silly TV shows, videos of my favorite—Nate the Hoof Guy—and took naps. In a way, it gave me permission to slow down.

I still have a couple more days off, and who knows what I’ll accomplish—if anything. And that’s absolutely okay.

 Choosing Purpose Over Pay

I choose to live my life with purpose and joy—and that choice extends to my work.

I worked eleven days in a row again—not by choice, but by necessity. Part of it was for my division, and part of it was for our parent company.

As my direct boss kept pointing out, “You’re not getting paid extra for this—why are you doing it?”

I’m an exempt employee, so in reality, it doesn’t matter how much I work. I could work two hours or twenty-four in a day, and my salary would stay the same. Maybe my bonus will be bigger, but I don’t have high hopes for that.

Yes, I wasn’t paid extra for this assignment. But I’m at a stage in my life—and my career—where I care deeply about having interest in what I do. I outgrew my current job years ago and chose to stay because it gives me flexibility. That flexibility allows me to take care of my two other loves (besides my husband and kids): my dog and my Pilates class. It also gives me the freedom to manage my side hustles.

When my boss mentioned—again—that I shouldn’t be working for another division because I wasn’t getting paid, I was taken aback. It wasn’t the response I expected, especially from someone in management.

I later told my husband how everything went down, and he pointed out that her reaction reflected her perspective, likely shaped by her own issues with management, and was not a reflection of my actions.

He was right, of course. I might even tell him that one day.

In the meantime, I’ll continue carving my own path at work—choosing projects that bring me joy and fulfillment—until the day I decide to retire and turn my side hustles into my full-time focus.

All the Dogs I Loved Before

All the Dogs I Loved Before

Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson sang a duet in 1984 about all the girls they loved before.
 In my humble opinion, the lyrics should change to all the dogs I loved before.

This morning, while I was driving the Passenger Prince, we saw a Wheaten Terrier. Our first “together” dog was a Wheaten. By pure coincidence, this week also marks the anniversary of our Wheaten’s passing.

Our Wheaten—the Wonder Dog—was the Prince’s dog, and I was the spare human. The Wonder Dog was wicked smart and an incredible family dog. The Prince still talks about him as if he were an angel. The Wonder Dog had many shenanigans and loved to one-up the Prince all the time. He was great—but the Prince tends to forget that the Wonder Dog once broke a window when his arch nemesis walked by, or how he managed to reach the counter (despite his short stature) and eat all the bread. He was our first counter-surfer, and we learned a lot from his antics. We had to completely dog-proof the house!

Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago was the “Gotcha Day” for our second dog together. She was amazing—my dog—and he was the spare human that time. She died unexpectedly, but we were fortunate to have her with us for six wonderful years.

We mourned both dogs deeply. I still cry when I think about them.
Our third “together” dog is our latest—she’s a heart healer and pure joy. She’s a rescue, and on many days, I think she rescued us from sadness.

Seeing that Wheaten this morning made us both smile. As we drove to work, we felt happy and full of memories. By the time I dropped the Prince off, we had already agreed: our next dog will be a Wheaten.

Afterward, I checked my Spotify playlist and added Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson’s duet—because, after all, it really is about all the dogs I loved before.

The Scale, the Dog, and the Skinny Prince

The passenger Prince complained this morning that he cannot lose half a pound. He was lucky I did not throw a shoe at him. Passenger Prince is a six-foot-two man who weighs 165 pounds — and that is only if the dog puts her paw on the scale when he stands on it.

And me: a five-foot-nothing post menopausal woman, on Wegovy, who does Pilates four times a week, exercises and takes 10,000 steps a day. After losing 45 pounds in a year and a half, I still weigh the same as I did the day I had my last baby.

Technically I can tell people that it’s still pregnancy weight — except the baby is twenty-five with a job and a 401(k). But who would want to argue with a postmenopausal woman?

Having a skinny, tall husband is not great for self-esteem, especially at my age. Before the Wegovy, hearing him complain about his weight was not easy. Luckily for him, I lost my hearing and could tune him out when he complained.

I weigh less than him now after 18 months of injections and lots of Pilates and gym visits. But alas — it is what it is: him being a skinny, tall man, and me being a curvy, petite woman. And yes there is a shoe in one hand, ready to be thrown.

Bruised, Busy and Still Standing

I took a day off from everything today. Well, almost everything.

Yesterday my day was hectic. I woke up at 6:30am — walked the dog, dropped the Passenger Prince at his doctor’s appointment, ran to get my blood test, ran back to pick up the Passenger Prince from his doctor’s appointment, and drove him to work.

All this before 9am and before my coffee.
All this after I got bitten by a dog on my morning walk, all this with a big nasty bruise on my non–model-worthy leg.

A lady with a new dog approached us this morning and told us how friendly her dog was and let it get closer to us. Turns out her dog was not so friendly, and my Airedale decided to protect me. I ended up between the dogs — and I got hurt.

I called my mom on my drive from dropping the prince at work. I was told to put a cabbage leaf on my leg. Sadly, the only cabbage we had was already in the soup, and there were no extra leaves around for my leg.

My long day continued with going to work. At work I Scotch-taped an ice pack to my swollen leg and got home past 9pm.
Dog walk again, shower, and two painkillers later — I was dead asleep.

So today, I took the day off from everything. Well, almost everything. I still woke up, took the dog on a walk, drove the prince to work, and did laundry.
My leg has all sorts of rainbow colors now, and apparently my non-existent leg modeling career is over.

So yes, I took the day off — if you ignore the walking, driving, and laundry. My leg is now a masterpiece of purples and greens, and my modeling career is officially over before it began. Maybe tomorrow I’ll rest for real… or maybe I’ll just buy a cabbage. 🥬