Old Friends

I've had some wonderful friends in my life and I've had some who called themselves friends but really weren't when times were tough.  There's a quote that someone said once that mentions how friends come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
I've had lots of friends for reasons, lots for seasons but only a very select few for a lifetime.

I don't choose my friends quickly or easily, in fact, there is a long process that I go through before I actually call anyone a friend.  I have a long checklist that I tick off.

• They have to be fun to be around.  
• They have to have a little evil streak in them like me.  
• They have to be grounded....like really grounded, no airy fairy arty farty bullshit about them.  
• They have to tell it like it is.  
• They have to not give two hoots what anyone else thinks.  
• They have to stay with me in a cafe when I snort as I laugh and they have to laugh until they cry when we get silly together.  
• They have to be caring and loving and family people.
• They have to be stayers when the shit hits the fan.
• They have to be the shit stirrers when the shit needs stirring.
• They have to be witty.
• They have to be intelligent.
• They have to have known what it's like to be down and out and know how to stand up for themselves and get on with things without whingeing about it.
• They have to not give a damn what the latest fashions or trends are.
• And above all, after years of not seeing each other, they have to still be themselves when we meet again.

  I think I can count on one hand those who are my friends who fill all those roles.  I'm not counting family in that, just about all of my family are like that anyway and always will be because that's who we are and how we were bought up.

Today I met up with two old friends and the years between our meetings just melted away.  I could have cried when I saw them again and saw that nothing had changed.  We sat and talked for a long time, not long enough though, and there was that connection you have when you feel like a part of you just kicked back into gear because you were together again.  

And now I'm thinking about my 'trimming' regime and I've realised that to be fully happy, healthy and whole in middle age, trimming shouldn't be the only thing we do.  There are times when we also need to "fatten".  We need to find those soul mates again and hold out our arms and draw them in and add them to our selves.  

Fattening our hearts without using cholesterol... it makes everything seem very obvious to me.

I added more wrinkles to my face today because I laughed and smiled and crinkled up my eyes and wiped away tears of laughter without thinking about how little elasticity the eye region has at this age.... and you want to know something?.... I don't give a damn.

When I look in the mirror tonight and pour on the Vitamin E Night Lotion, I know it's only going on to keep someone who doesn't have soul mates happy.  I know that what is inside is still young and wrinkle-free, and my true friends know the same.

And when I come back to this blog tomorrow, I won't write anything soppy like this again!

Trimming with Rudyard

I'm very lucky now.  I've managed to wrangle my working arrangements to allow me some "me" time.  Don't get me wrong, I work my clacker off at work from the moment I get there to the moment I leave and I put in 110% every day at a million different things in my job.  My Mondays are from 8.30am to 8.30pm, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are usual day long shifts which leaves me with Thursday to do all the "house type" things and get ready for Meday.

This morning I woke up early and thought about what MeDay would be this week.  I thought about how I could work in some of the dreaded E word; I thought about what I actually wanted to do; and then I thought about Rudyard Kipling.

Dear old Rudy once said "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet".

I don't mind a bit of Rudyard Kipling, he made a lot of sense.  His wise words really do echo a lot of my sentiments, for example: "Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh how beautiful" and sitting in the shade" and "All the people like us are We, and all the others are They" and my particular favourite, "Payday came and with it beer".  I also always wanted to be Jungle Boy when I was a kid.  Either Jungle Boy or Astro Boy... but the girl version of both of them.  Astro Boy was so handsome......

I know, I digressed.  I tend to do that.  It's a prerogative of mid life.  Your brain is so stuffed full of 'things' that when you start on a track it reminds you of something else and you go off wandering to it because it bought back something you need to dwell on again for whatever reason, and there is nothing wrong with that.  Alzheimers is just a form of track wandering if you ask me.   I don't ever want to lose my mind, that would kill me, but I often think that those who have, could really be just focusing on things they've seen along the track and found to be far more interesting than that they see around them now.  There are many days when I can't blame them for that at all

So back to Rudyard and his quote about East and West and never shall they meet.

Lying in bed pondering the E Word and MeDay I realised that they really are East and West and I'll be buggered if they are going to meet today.

I called this blog Kim Trims and I know that conjures up images of me trying to become a stick figure again, but you know what?  It's not all about that.  It's about trimming what is not needed in my life.  Yes, a few extra pounds of blubber loss wouldn't go astray and I will work on that, but it's not THE most important part of the trimming process.

In fact, quite often that soft belly is actually a necessary item.

Take yesterday for example when Mother Theresa bought Milly Blue Eyes Forget Me Not and Taya SweetPea What Am I Doing In This Madhouse around for a visit with Nana.  Sitting in the lounge chair with three month old Taya in one arm and 2 year old Milly crawling up into the other so she could teach Taya how to "tuddle nana" made me realise that they needed a squishy soft cuddly Nana to grab hold off and get wrapped up in.  Imagine how awful it would be if you went to get a cuddle from your Nana and her bony old frame was all you felt.  Ugh.  I can't think of anything worse to remember about your grandmother as you get older.  So yesterday, the blubber was necessary.

This morning though on MeDay I decided that if I really had to have it then I needed to polish the blubber.  A long hot bath in the morning is probably one of the most luxurious things I can think of so I laid in there with my blubber and got out the polishing materials.

Firstly a hearty Shea Exfoliating Scrub.  Yes, it took a lot of scrubbing but I think I trimmed about a millimetre of skin that obviously wasn't needed.  Then an overall lashing of Shea Body Butter supplied by Doctor Doalot's Bag of Magic Potions.  That added about a pound of perfumed radiance but made me shine like a new dime and smelt very... um....I'm trying to think what I smell like....soft, I think is the word.  Yes, I smell soft.

Apart from trimming the millimetre of skin I also trimmed away some of the stress level and the "I'm an old bag" feeling that I had when I woke up.  Feeling "soft" has a tendency to make me feel more female and that's a very necessary part of growing older for a woman.  The hormone fairy has finally got the hint and moved out to pasture and left you feeling just a lot freer, but also a bit... lost ... in the femininity department.  So soft is good.

Soft and blubbery would have been good yesterday with the children on my knees but today, soft and trimmed is a better option.  

MeDay has started well, now I'm going to continue to do whatever I want to today and forget about work, forget about bills, forget about stresses, forget about what others think of my blubber, forget about renovations and just be me, trimmed and soft.

Devil Gate Drive Thru - Would you like yoga with that?

Anyone my age remembers Suzi Quatro.  We all wanted to be her when we were about 17.  She was petite, dressed in leather, hung out with all the tough kids and played guitar.  How cool was that... a groovy chick.


And now she's 61.  She's still petite, she's still dressed in leather, she still plays guitar, but she's got a bit of a wedgie happening.  And it's at the front of the jeans.   Not THAT attractive or groovy chickie babe material anymore.  I think the tough kids would possibly laugh at that.


Someone interviewed Suzi and she told how she keeps so fabulously groovy.  Check out the article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2052973/Suzi-Quatro-Inside-I-feel-30ish--Im-childish-optimistic.html




There are quite a few home truths coming out of little Suzi's mouth in this and I'm thinking they need to be highlighted.

1. "But I don’t overdo it these days — in my youth I partied with the best of them. I thought I was invincible."  I hear you Suzi.  I remember those days.  They don't seem that long ago, in fact, I'm sure it was only last week that I could get up on Monday morning, a little tired but still ready for a week of work, after spending probably every waking moment of the weekend in either a state of inebriation or excessive partying or, shall we call it, 'dalliancing', with every possible concoction known to the 70's bar industry snuggly nestled in my digestive system.  Now, it's a slightly different matter.  A big weekend for me is staying up till 8.30pm on Sunday night... mind you, horizontal in front of the TV, waiting for the latest episode of Underbelly and cursing the ads because if you took them out, the whole show would be over in 40 minutes and I could be asleep before 10pm.
2. "The older we get the harder it is to stay in shape, it requires discipline."  Well, duh.  Tell me something I don't know.
3. "I jog every day where my husband Rainer and I live in rural Essex, for three miles, followed by an hour of yoga." Oh yes, I forgot.  I too have time for a 3 mile jog in rural countryside followed by another hour of yoga.  Yes, I forgot I had that time.  Let's see, I guess she just forgot to mention that she does it around midnight in her gumboots, umbrella and overcoat with a cricket bat to fight off marauding possums.  Give us a break Suzi!  Oh the bloody luxury to have that amount of time to do that!  And then what does she do after those hours of exercise?  Go to work?  Yeah, not bloody likely.  She's 61.  She'd be passed out on the lounge like a dead starfish, snorting, gasping, blurting and screaming abuse at her bunions for growing just because she wore 12 inch platform vinyl boots for a few years.
4. "My mother died at 78 of stomach cancer, which is a shame as she was a real health nut, ahead of her time. My father, who was the more unhealthy one, lived until 94 but on his side there is artery and heart problems."  So SuziQ.... do you get it now?

So here I am, looking at Suzi's obvious frontal wedgie and thinking- give it up girl.  Relax.  Get some Bonds Cottontails and untuck your T-shirt so it covers your nether regions, and really.... would it hurt to run a brush through your hair?
But, keep plucking your guitar if you want to, that's fine because that's what you like to do (and maybe take just a little time out to pluck the stray eyebrow hairs).  Remember your Dad.

There's nothing wrong with me

It's true, there's nothing wrong with me.
My new doctor told me so.  She forced me to have 40 bucketfuls of blood sucked out of all my orifices and she concocted them somehow in a test tube, shaken, not stirred, and she came up with the diagnosis of "Kim, there's nothing wrong with you."

I was rather disappointed actually.  I wanted a thyroid problem.  I've heard there are some great pills you can get for thyroid problems that help you lose weight.  I was looking forward to being able to say "Oh dear, what a shame I have to go on that medication... are you really sure I have to?" and then running out the door of the surgery straight to the chemist and the pie shop and singing Hallelujah while I poured the tomato sauce on and tucked in.

Bugger.  What would that bitch know anyway?

Oh she did have one little thing to add but it didn't give me any great excitement.  "Your cholesterol is up a bit, but only a little bit, and it can probably be fixed with a bit of regular exercise so don't worry about it, it's nothing dramatic".

Bitch.

Surely to God there is some other way to fix it other than .... gulp.... exercise.   What a filthy word that is.  Any word with an x in it is filthy.  Think about it... eXtra calories, taX, maXimum effort, taXidermy, eXtreme sports... aXe murderer.

I don't want to eXercise.  I hate eXercise.

sigh.

Think I'll have another cup of tea.  I'll be good and won't have a biscuit.  Well it is only 8am I suppose, but somewhere in the world it's afternoon tea time and they'll be having biscuits with their cup of tea so I really am doing International Dieting if I refrain from a biscuit now.
I'll even walk out to the kitchen to get the tea, and walk back to my study to sit down and workout on the computer for the day.  My hands get a lot of exercise.

I do have thin fingers, even if they are starting to get a bit knobbly on the joints from arthritis.  And my hands have got a few brown spots on them now from not being wrapped in kid gloves all their lives.  Only the rich so and so's have smooth hands when they reach this age.  They never watched Brenda the Palmolive lady on the ads and wished for green Palmolive dishwashing liquid because it "softens hands while you do the dishes". They probably had someone do it for them.

Hey, there's a start, that's how I can begin to fix the fact there is nothing wrong with me and that's why I'm overweight and looking a bit shabby around the gills.  I'll buy some hand cream.

Doctor Doalot, my eldest daughter who used to care for animals but now breeds her own two legged ones and cares for them brilliantly, has started selling "organically environmentally whalefree smell like a 70's back row of the Horden Pavillion rock show recycled biodegradable non political multicultural save the pigeons and their poo" skin care and make up products so I'll get some off her.

It will be a start.  I'll sit down and rub it in and think about how there is nothing wrong with me and how the hell I am going to fix that terrible problem.

Here we go again...

There's nothing wrong with me
that chocolate won't fix

Many of you may remember The Great Time Travel Episode of a couple of years ago which saw me trying to transport myself back to the age of 40 before my 52nd birthday.
What an adventure that turned out to be and what brilliant lessons I learnt along the way, such as, electronic fitness instructors are retarded and pubic hair still grows in the shade.

Well, this time, I've decided that trying to regain youth isn't the answer.  I'm having too much fun being all older and wiser and really not giving a damn what people think anymore.  You can't do that when you are youngish (as 40 year olds are these days).  You definitely need some wisdom spots and aches and pains before you can whiplash people with your tongue with maximum effect.

Shaking your head in disdain at the stupidity of most of the rest of the human race is also something that only those of us who have had maximum storage capacity reached in our brain cells are able to do effectively.  It's an art form that only comes with having lived long enough to know everything about everything.

So why am I bothering to write another blog?  To be honest, I need your support once more.

Funny old word, "support".  My ankles need support if I'm on my feet too long each day.  My waistline needs support from old ladies undies because it sags over the top of g-string styled knickers.  My doctors need support when I visit them and tell them how to do their jobs properly.
But when I see the word "support" all I see is the breakdown of the word "sup" and "port".  Two of my favourite things in the world actually.

So please sup with me and have a port if you wish, and let me regale you with my tales of trying to lose a few extra kilos without changing anything I do or killing someone.

We've got quite an adventure ahead of us.