Month: September 2016

Again – I Have Nothing

This week’s over-fifty ramblings are more about frustration than anything else. I’m sure you’ve been there at some point this week. 

It’s all about steps. I really am quite fond of steps. Or to clarify that, stairs. Whenever I have had a chance to take an elevator, or steps, the latter are usually what I opt for when I’m not loaded down with stuff. Why? Because I’m crazy? Or because I know it’s good for me? I guess a little bit of both.

 I watched my parents live a very healthy life into their nineties without any mobility problems, so I’ve always attributed that to the fact that they always lived where they had to go up and down steps.

Here in South Beach we live in an attractive six story Mediterranean atrium style building incorporating a group of duplex and triplex penthouse townhouse units accessible by elevator. Having three floors in our unit I have stairs every day and I don’t think anything of running up and down during the day. No problem. But when leaving the house, I always take the elevator to the lobby. Cooler and easier in this tropical climate. 

Well, here I go fast forwarding again. Our new management company was not happy with our current elevator service  so they canceled the contract without reading the ‘no cancel’ clause. The result? When the elevator broke down shortly thereafter there was no one to fix it and now the attorneys are fighting over who can do it. In the meantime, we have been without elevator service for almost six weeks now and I have lost my idiot love of stairs. 

These days I can be found at least six round trip times a day climbing three fights of dastardly cement stairs stripped in yellow in the hot stairwell just carrying on with my life. I’m not building cardio vascular strength, but instead building dread every time my intercom rings summoning me to the lobby to fetch something I have to drag up three floors.  

My contribution to the world economy has definitely stopped and if I ever see the woman who canceled our contract without reading it I just might give her a swift kick in the derrière, or sentence her to walk up and down our hot stairwell steps in perpetuity. 

©Sandra Hart 2016 All rights reserved.

Celebrate Freedom

Today is a day we should never allow the world to forget. On 9/11 America forever lost her innocent sense of safety from terrorism within our shores. 

Personally, my husband and I not only lost neighbors and friends that day, but we were eye witnesses to the horrible event 14 miles across the water from our cliff side deck.  

Local ferries and fisherman crossed the sea from our side to give aid to those who needed to leave the island for care or rescue. The constant drone of the motors lasted into the night as the dark smoke enveloped the sky and drew a curtain over the horizon. If that was not hard enough to witness, we were also personally affected by the third hijacked plane, Flight 93, that crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was next to a farm owned by longtime personal friends. 

Never again.

 ©Sandra Hart 2016

 

Lotus Hands And Hip Shake

Lotus Hands And Hip Shake Therapy

Most mornings I am lotus hand, hip shaking, lift stepping and shoulder shaking my over-fifty self to energizing music. My new uninhibited idea of fun exercise in my freedom years is Bollywood dancing in the front row with no one watching but Sofi and my big Sony flat screen.   

I have to admit I was part of the 1970s fitness craze. I joined my first gym, bought the most flattering leotard that I could find and headed out with a fitness mat curled under my arm. I went faithfully to the aerobic classes for, well, maybe about six months. 

Three times a week I dragged myself to the gym trying to believe that I was a public exercise person who loves strange showers and locker rooms. That fantasy faded faster than my waistline. One morning I just stopped, firm thighs be damned. 

What happened to save me from a lifetime membership of hiding in the back row of power aerobics, trying to stay fit and healthy while looking at the perfect behinds of women with figures I would never be able to achieve?Jane Fonda  did, that’s who. All of a sudden I could put my body through all types of aerobic pain in the privacy of my own living room.  

Throughout the ensuing years I have run 5K’s, walked miles, jogged a little, and made sure I downsized to a townhouse with stairs when all of my sane contemporaries were going with single floor residences. All this effort because I know it is good for my aging body. But, nevertheless, in spite of trying to keep as fit my age allows, I have stayed away from gyms.

Between you and me, I rarely ever found exercising fun until I discovered I was able to combine my fascination with a movie genre and exercise – Bollywood films. Netflix and iTunes are my new ‘go to’ for Bollywood movies and Bollywood music videos. 

If you already haven’t checked them out, Bollywood films always include music with dancing that is an interesting fusion of Indian classical, Indian folk, jazz, hip hop, belly dance and others from around the world. 

These films are always ‘feel good for the soul’ entertainment. I love the energy and message they bring and there is a whole lot of shaking going on and calories burned in my South Beach living room to Bollywood music.  Life is good when you love it with passion. 

  

achchha lag raha hai. – feeling good
Pyar se Zindegi mel tha hi – Life is good when you love it with passion.


©Sandra Hart 2016. All rights reserved

Where You Born At The Wrong Time?

Did you ever think as a woman that you were born in the wrong time in the wrong generation just because of your body type? 

Living in a tropical area I see women’s young scantily clad bodies every day – everywhere. There are countless faux hourglass figures on tiny little women, tall thin females, all with the biggest breasts and bottoms I have ever seen. They are all flaunting  everything I was hiding as a teenager. Why, oh why, was I born too early with the naturally proportioned right stuff for today’s beauty standards? 

All of this occurred to me as I was standing, daydreaming while Sofi was stopping every three minutes getting her ‘smell fixes’ along the tropical streets in my neighborhood. The wind began to blow, brushing my skirt against my ankles and I started thinking about how I love long skirts and maxi dresses and how as a BoHo style woman I have lived to see myself evolve through so many different fashion phases. 

 I started going back in thought about how throughout the years I have matured to have finally found my own fashion style. I wished, as a young woman, I had had more confidence to dress for myself instead of trying to follow the trends that never fit my body type.  

I grew up in the 40s and 50s and and lived through wearing boy Levi’s that in order to get a size that fit my hips the waist was just ‘genormous’. I had to borrow a belt from my brother, pulling it as tight as I could, resulting in unsightly lumps of bulky blue jean material all around my waist. I weighed only 119 pounds, was 5 foot 7, but I thought I was cursed to have curves in all the wrong places.

Then there were my high school and college years and the pencil skirts. They were the bane of my genetic existence. If you didn’t have a flat derrière you looked ridiculous in a pencil skirt. Every magazine I opened from Vogue to Seventeen had these beautiful girls with flat bottoms looking terrific in their pencil skirts.  

I did side leg lifts while holding onto my dresser and actually bounced on my derrière all around my bedroom hoping to flatten my rear projection so that I could look marvelous in my pencil skirts. Of course nothing worked to alter my genetic hindsight. I wanted to walk backwards everywhere.

Finally the 70’s came to my rescue. Bell bottoms and long vests were in  fashion and saved me a bit, then longer suit jackets and pant suits through the 80’s and 90’s arrived and were flattering to my figure type.

 Those forgiving fashions also got me through my menopause poundage ups and downs. But it really wasn’t until long skirts burst onto the fashion scene that my own sense of style began to awaken. I came out of the closet. I am  a long skirt BoHo woman who has once and for all found her fashion space. And think of it. It only took me about 60 years! 

I can honestly say one great positive thing we can all agree on about getting older is one cares less and less about what other people think and more and more about one’s own comfortable space. 

 

Copyright Sandra Hart©    All Rights Reserved