Beginnings and endings...

It's hard to believe that it's been almost a month since I posted last. (Thanks very much to all those who emailed to ask what was going on.)

It's been a time of beginnings and endings.

A few weeks ago, I went to the funeral of a childhood friend. She died at 42, yet left a legacy that was staggering. Her funeral was held in small, inner city church on an unbelievably hot morning. On a good day, that church could hold, perhaps, 200 people comfortably. On this day, there were well over 300. The lower level of full; the balcony was packed.

People from all walks of life, and ranging in age from a few weeks to more than 90 years, attended. Unmarried and without children of her own, my childhood friend touched more lives than I can even imagine. She was the director of admissions for a local college and dozens of current students, aspiring students and college graduates joined family, friends and work colleagues to say to good-bye. It was an awesome testament to the value of having a purpose in life and fulfilling it.

Prior to this, I never really understood what people meant when they said a funeral could be inspiring.

Now I do.

Anyway, that was ending I mentioned earlier. Now for the beginning.

You've probably heard the term, sandwich generation. If not, it describes baby boomers who juggle both childcare and elder care. Since I don't have children, I guess I'm an open-face sandwich.

The past few weeks have seen the beginning of a lot of heavy lifting with elder care. My mother now requires a great deal of supervision. Whether this is the result of age-related cognitive problems, a small stroke or the beginning of Alzheimer's, I don't know. What I do know is that I've started the dance of monitoring a host of medications, removing the option to drive, finding small tasks to keep her occupied, and other tasks many of you have likely dealt with for a long, long time.

If you have advice or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Wheeee!

If you've read the past few posts, you know my life had a major hiccup recently.

During the course of two days, I had every work-related experience I've tried my whole life to avoid, and I presented publicly every emotion I've tried my whole life not to show. I got angry. I said what I felt. I was embarrassed. I cried...

And guess what? It didn't kill me.

That was the first indication that something was afoot.

The second occurred this morning. I woke up full of gratitude -- gratitude for my life, my health, my family and my friends. Gratitude for the strength to finally go after what I really want. Gratitude for having, in a world full of turmoil, a day of peace.

The last few days brought change that was unexpected, painful, frightening and disconcerting. Ultimately, though, those days were a gift. The fall was horrible, but the bounce-back? Baby, what a ride!

On iTunes right now: Nothing at all.

Calling Ashley Judd!

If my life were a movie, I'd want to be played by Ashley Judd.

Whenever she plays a woman in distress, she has about fifteen minutes of angst then the music swells, she gets a determined look on her face and Presto! Change-o! she's miraculously reborn. She's spunky. She's focused. She's totally in control.

Now, being portrayed by Ashley Judd is a stretch for many reasons, not the least of which is that the personal orchestra-on-call specializing in my Presto! Change-o! music is apparently on strike. Or hard of hearing. Or just too darn cranky to be bothered these days.

But that's beside the point.

Movies have a way of glossing over in fifteen minutes what can take weeks, months or years to accomplish. Deciding what you want, making the hard, hard choices necessary to get it, taking risks and failing at least some of the time takes time.

One of the little nuggets of animal kingdom trivia stuck in my brain is a fact about birds. Watching them struggle to free themselves from their eggs can be heartbreaking. Some survive. Some don't. Those who do emerge wet, disheveled, bruised and exhausted...but it's that struggle that gives them the strength to live, to grow and to fly.

For everyone out there going through the struggle, I'm pulling for you.

Pull for me.

One day, maybe we'll all be played by Ashley Judd!

Well, now...

Sometimes Ms. Peri is a lot better at offering advice than she is at taking it. And sometimes the universe gives Ms. Peri a huge smackdown, just to get her attention.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I was drifting. I had several writing projects under way, and I was splintered in a dozen different directions. I wasn't focusing on the goals I'd set and more than a few friends advised me to slow down, take a deep breath and force myself to answer the question, "What do you want?"

But I didn't.

Why? Well, because I'm Ms. Peri, and I can do it all. And because if I don't commit, I'll never fail...and Ms. Peri does not like to fail.

Smart move, right?

Apparently the universal powers that be (UPTB) did not agree.

First, they tried a friendly nudge. A local professional organization nominated me for PR person of the year. It was a huge honor but throughout the process I kept hearing a little voice asking, "Is this what you want? Is this it?"

Dealing with those issues was inconvenient and the little voice was a nag, so I blew it off...even though I knew that PR, at least this year, is my bread-and-butter, not my heart and soul.

I didn't decline the nomination, but I didn't fully engage in the process either. I just went with the flow. I didn't commit.

Clearly dissatisfied with that approach, the UPTB opted for a shove.

Today, my job-share arrangement at a local magazine ended without warning. Whoosh! One more item off my plate.

While I was listening to my boss tell my work share partner and me that we were fired, that darn little voice came back and asked, "What do you want? What do you really want?"

Apparently, I am destined to answer this question one way or the other. I'll either suck it up and commit to something or, one by one, my diversions will be waved in my face or be taken away.

Not to bring age into the equation, but I think the UPTB are trying to tell me that I'm too old to be so ambivalent.

Life is interesting, isn't it?

Playing on iTunes right now: Everything by Michael Buble. I LOVE this song!

I'm not a math-phile, but...

I struggled through a few calculations to better understand just what was involved with the percent of body fat issue mentioned in the previous post. Here's what I discovered:

1) 37 percent of my current weight is 59.57 pounds. (Imagine carrying 12 5-pound bags of sugar -- or an average-sized nine-year-old -- on your back every day. That's comparable.)

2) 23 percent of my ideal weight is 32.20 pounds. That means I should lose 27.37 pounds of fat and gain 6.37 pounds of muscle to be reasonably fit.

Okay...27.37 pounds of fat! I'm having a total Bridget Jones moment here. How does one even wrap one's brain around the concept of losing 27.37 pounds of fat?

Not to be whiney, but -- Ugh! This is going to be hard.

Obesity: It's not what you think

For years, the concept of losing weight and getting fit was a pleasant pastime -- lose a few pounds, get into those cute pants; firm up a bit, don't scare myself when I catch a rear-end view in a dressing room three-way mirror.

You get the picture, right?

The other day, for reasons I still haven't figured out, I dusted off my super-dooper Sharper Image scale (it measures weight and calculates percent of body fat) and hopped on. The results left me shocked -- and not in a good way.

I'm still roughly 20 pounds overweight, though you probably couldn't tell that by looking at me. I'm also, and this is the scary part, 37 percent body fat. For someone with a family history of diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, this is not welcome news.

Phillip Whitten, a writer for Swimming World Magazine, says obesity is defined as too much body fat, not necessarily too much weight. Translation: you can be thin and fat simultaneously.

According to one of his articles, men should have 15 percent body fat or less and women should have 22 percent body fat or less during their prime. There's not much wiggle room for boomers, either. Whitten says 55-year-old men who exercise regularly generally have body fat levels of 23 percent; hearty women exercisers have body fat levels of 29 percent at the same age.

Our nation of couch potatoes aren't faring well, however. Whitten writes, "According to 1994 health statistics, at age 35, the average American male carries 25 percent of his weight in fat, average female 33 percent (the numbers are probably even higher today.)"

I'll be honest. I'd hoped there'd be great dissent about how much body fat is healthy. (You've seen those weight charts. They're all over the map.) Alas, it was not to be. There is some deviation, certainly, but overall, not that much.

Why this matters:

If, like me, you have writing projects you're trying to finish or other goals you'd like to complete, and you just can't seem to make progress, if may be because your body -- and your brain -- are under stress from other sources. Becoming more fit may be just what you need to do to get going.

Intrigued? Here are a couple of sites you can visit to see where you fall on the health-o-meter:

Recommended Body Weights and Percent Body Fat Contents for Women

Sports Fitness Advisor

Playing on iTunes right now: Authors on Tour featuring Allan Folsom, author of The Machiavelli Covenant. Authors on Tour is a podcast of writers discussing and reading from their works at The Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver. Sign up on iTunes.

Information comes when you need it.

An old friend contacted me today. We haven't spoken for years but, as the old saying goes, within a few minutes we were talking as though we never lost touch.

We worked together in the 80s and what I remember most is that no one -- and I mean no one -- ever had a bad thing to say about her. She went out of her way to make everyone happy. I entered the workforce wired the same way, but I gotta' tell you, she was a mentor for me. She'd elevated good girliness to an art form, and she taught me well.

We laughed about those days for a while...then she stopped laughing. "To be honest," she said, "the good ol' days weren't all that good."

She left the company in the early 90s, took another job and got downsized, got another job and was merged out, got another job and was laid off, and finally decided to go into business herself. In her 40s.

"It was horrible," she said. "I had no idea how to make decisions or how to state my opinion. I only knew how to make people happy."

She said she almost went broke because she never charged enough. (People liked her better because she was cheap.) She ran herself into the ground because she never challenged deadlines. (People liked her because she never asked for more time.) She got an ulcer because she never rocked the boat. (People liked her because she didn't complain.)

None of this surprised me because she was, after all, the Supreme Goddess of Good Girldom. But I have to admit, I was kinda' curious. So I asked her, as one good girl to another, how she turned things around.

"Badly," she said.

She wasn't joking. The woman with a Rolodex of friends now has one or two to her name. ("But they're real," she said. "I don't have kiss butt for them to like me.") She lost a lot of clients, and it wasn't easy to find more. She had to work hard to rebuild her reputation.

She's still an entrepreneur, but she changed businesses twice before settling on what she wanted to do.

"I had to learn a whole new language," she said. "I was like a baby -- or a stroke victim -- I had to learn to talk again, to walk again. I kept bumping into things and falling down and skinning my knee."

She's happier now. She said the journey was worth it. And when I told her about this blog, she offered advice for those, like me, who are trying to change.

"The scary part isn't when you start. Then the world is full of possibilities. You have a glorious idea of where you're going, and you have no idea how many will go wrong," she said. "And the scary part isn't when you're finished because then you've evolved. You've conquered something. You can look back on what you've done and feel really, really proud.

"The scary part is in the middle, when everything's a mess and you're all unsettled, when people say you're screwing up and nobody likes you and they say you're becoming a royal pain in the ass. That's when you have to remember that no one came into this world perfect. You have accept the fact that, yeah, you probably are screwing up, and a lot of people really don't like you, and you probably are a major pain in the ass.

"And that's okay. Tomorrow you'll do a little better. The key is to just keep keeping on."

Playing on iTunes: Again by Donnie McClurkin. Amazing song; amazing voice.