Tag Archives: Lois DeSocio

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! I Can Hear

27 Tuesday May 2014

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full-wrinkled-ear

I use my ears for more than hanging earrings.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

It’s been brought to my attention lately by my children, and by other young people in my life, that I say “Excuse me?” or “I’m so sorry, but I didn’t catch that,” and “What?” as much as I say, “Hi!” or “I’ll have a Chardonnay.”

I have noticed that I pump up the volume to ear-splitting levels when listening to music in my car or on my phone. And my television is turned up to number 25 or more. (Uh – like the movies! I explain to other people in the room who question the volume.)

And that little voice in one ear that was urging me to get my hearing tested (I believe the last time I had a hearing test was 1980-something), went right out the other.

But apparently poo-pooing a potential compromise in hearing is not unusual. Hearing loss is among the most untreated of the age-related disabilities. It seems that for us 50-somethings, as long we can hear the human voices around us, we tend to peg any auditory decline as not in our ears, but in the soft-talkers among us and the increasingly noisy world that we live in.

But, hear ye, my skeptics – I finally heard you. I tested the ears. And I’m normal. I guess I just like loud.

I found this cool hearing test offered by The National Hearing Test. May is Better Hearing and Speech Month, so the test is free (it costs only $8 regularly). It’s done over the phone (landline only) – call 866-223-7575 – and it takes about 20 minutes. You put one ear at a time to the phone, and punch in the numbers recited by a recorded voice amid static, which rapidly increases throughout the test. At completion, you are told whether or not your hearing in each ear is in the “normal range.”

And for those of you who may know someone like me, where broaching the subject of hearing fell on deaf ears, there’s a nifty little offering from The Center for Hearing and Communication (CHC) in New York and Florida. Check out Soundgram. You record a message to your loved one, and CHC will notify them that there is a message waiting for them, along with an offer for a free hearing screening at one of their locations. Your recorded message will be played for them at their free screening.

So listen up; take heed. Take the test. Send a Soundgram. And like me, either assure yourself that frequently saying, “What?,” means that you’re annoying (or as my son said when I shouted my test results, “Then maybe you have ADD?”), not hearing-impaired, or, if the test suggests your hearing is not in the normal range, go to an audiologist for further testing and treatment.

Studies show that ignoring hearing loss can lead to Dementia and Alzheimer’s – why rush those? There’s sophisticated technology out there for the taking – for free – to ease concerns, to diagnose hearing impairment and to treat accordingly.

We’re Back …

19 Monday May 2014

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Blog text

Sunday morning.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

… expect snafus!

The “fresh look” we promised upon return after our week-long hiatus may not be evident at first glance.

That’s because the change is behind the scenes. Julie is learning the technical and administrative end of the blog, and starting today (on the 18-month anniversary of The Write Side of 50), she’ll be running the back end now, while I extend my hiatus to pursue other ventures.

And like anything new, there’s a learning curve. (And lots of laughs.)

So if you get an e-mail from us that makes no sense – like yesterday’s inadvertent Happy Memorial Day, a week early – or if a blog is posted, and then it disappears (or if the whole blog disappears), laugh with us! And stay tuned.

You may notice a dangling participle, an errant ellipsis, or (no!) a misplaced em-dash. There may be a blank space where the headline should be. But no doubt, with each accidental click (Uh-Oh – I hit publish!) or slip of a finger, as with anything that is in transition, the blog that was built over the last year and a half may very well, through brilliant mistakes, deconstruct and manifest into something better.

And know that I’m still here for my friend, Jule – just a martini, a text, a phone call, or an accidental click away.

A Needle is Better With Linen (And Vice-Versa)

01 Thursday May 2014

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No good. Take it back.

BY JULIE SEYLER AND LOIS DESOCIO

Three out of seven mornings, I crave an unsweetened green ice tea, with extra ice from Starbucks. It’s acerbic and crisp. Usually, on my way to work, I am wearing my headset as I walk into Starbucks because Lois and I discuss every morning what we will post on the blog that day.

Like clockwork, in the middle of the conversation, we pause, because I have to order my tea. I always emphasize UN-sweetened, with EXTRA! ice to the barista behind the counter, because it’s the little touches that convert an acceptable drink to one that transcends even morning e-mails.

bathrobe sweater

No good (as a sweater).

This morning (still in boot-mode), I got off the bus. It was raining, but before heading into my office, I walked in to Starbucks for that green tea. Lo and I were on the horn figuring out the schedule. I ordered, got my tea and hobbled across the street, and up the elevator to my office. I took my first sip of tea.

UGH! It was sweetened! A cloying, fake taste of sucrose. Impossible to ingest. I explained to Lo I had to hang up and go back to Starbucks to return my tea.

Her reaction, quoted below, in my opinion, offers an unedited window into how different we are.

Lo is a piece of white linen – pure, malleable and moves with ease through wind. I am the needle, although rigid, pointed, and not retractable, am needed to pull in and sew it up (blog included):

You mean you can’t suck it up just this one time?

Absolutely not. It’s disgusting and I paid for it and I am going to exchange it.

I would never do that. And with a boot on? I would have sucked it down even if I hated it.

I must. It is a travesty to the palate that defeats the purpose of the pleasure.

So, with a boot on, after settled in at your desk, you are going to go back to Starbucks just to exchange tea?

Yes.

I hate returning things. Even clothes and furniture. I kept a chair from Pier One that I found out was broken once I got it home in my kitchen for three years rather than lug it back. It still worked. And I spent $75 for a really ugly sweater years ago. Is definitely worthy of a return trip, but it’s still in my closet, five years later. I use it as a bathrobe.

Easter Recap: The Chicken Came Before the Egg

21 Monday Apr 2014

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hot chicken

Hot stuff (kinda).

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Yesterday, I tried to take chicken to the other side.

For decades, my Easter-dinner tradition has been to make a different deviled egg. It’s the first thing I do. I’ve taken the traditional route (mushy yolk in egg white), the non-traditional (pieces of egg white on top of a molded mound of yolk), topped them with nuts and raisins, and sprinkled throughout with shrimp and garlic. Everybody expects them.

But since traditional to me also means behaving non-traditionally, and since I am also hot – as in spicy – as in nothing can be too peppery, piquant or throat-closing for me (Make my nose run! Flood my eyes!), this year, I had to put my eggs aside, because I spent two days, and most of Easter morning, making, and ultimately, tweaking, Peaches Hothouse Extra Hot Chicken from the “notoriously spicy” Peaches Hothouse in Brooklyn.

Brine martini

Tastes like chicken.

The recipe is a hat trick for me. It has salt (homemade brine), crunch (it’s fried), and a challenge – smoked ghost chili powder. (Warning: DO NOT do what I did, and think, ooh brine! what a great martini this would make. It doesn’t.)

Ghost-chili powder is made from the Bhut Jolokia pepper which, until 2011, when it was trumped by the Trinidad Scorpion pepper, was the hottest pepper in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Pepper hotness is rated on Scoville Heat Units. Tabasco – 5,000 units. Jalapeno – 8,000 units. Habanero – 350,000 units. Ghost Chili – over 1 million units. (There’s a skull on the bottle.)

What’s not to love?

But ghost chili is as elusive as it is fiery. Apparently, I would have to head south – Nashville; east – Brooklyn; southeast – India; or to Amazon (.com) to find it.

So the Hothouse recipe, which was a secret until The New York Times ran it on March 19, has remained a secret in my house because, given my short, prep-window, I had to tweak.

I substituted a combo of smoked hot paprika (The Times recommended this) and extra cayenne. The cayenne and hot paprika throat-sizzle was not the skull-and-crossbones Easter Sunday dinner I had hoped for, but no doubt, some secret “Hallelujahs!” were whispered by my always-open-to-my-culinary-whims family, who range from 0 (my mom) to 1 million (my son, who douses all his food with hot sauce) on the hotness scale. Next year.

And I was tweaked by guilt. After the chicken, came some deviled eggs. I did a last-minute scramble and put together a tame, traditional, batch, which made for a superb, non-traditional, after-Easter, breakfast-parade of chicken and eggs.An After-Easter Parade.

I Still Love You, Dean

04 Friday Apr 2014

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Dean Martin

No shortness on seduction.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

I just found out that Dean Martin was only 5’10” tall. I had pegged him as at least 6’2″. No matter – he still measures up.

I’ve had a lifetime love affair with Dean Martin. Ever since I first liked a boy (12 years old?), I had hoped that all boys would grow up and turn into Dean Martin.

Everything about him moves me. Like some sort of swirly, swooning chemical substance, his voice – that heartfelt tremolo, mixed with a suggestive cadence – is the kind that closes eyes, quivers lips, sways heads. And weakens knees. I wish I could drink wine and eat meat with Dean.

But beyond all the obvious – his swagger, his cool (the bedroom eyes, the Colgate smile, those hands!) – what is just as striking is the nuance of Dean. He didn’t seem to sweat the small stuff. He didn’t try too hard. His confidence was as innate as that square jaw. Put all of Dean together – his manliness, his poise, his mystique, his talent, his flair – and he is downright poetic.

Dean died on Christmas Day in 1995. I was 40. And a hard-core rock and roller. But I remember buying a bunch of his Christmas albums when he died, and I still put them on every December 25. He’s my go-to Pandora guy, and I have the “Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show” on my iPad.

So, I still love you, Dean. You remain my touchstone, my dreamboat. And I love that you can still surprise me with stuff that I didn’t know. Like your height.

For the Love of Coca-Cola

14 Friday Mar 2014

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BY JULIE SEYLER AND LOIS DESOCIO

From Julie:
Coca-Cola was 68 years old when I was born, and it’s still here, trying to compete and stay relevant. But, as we all know, everything grows old. Coke’s latest quarterly earnings indicate it may be getting frayed around the edges because for the first time in its 127 year history it is no longer the Number 1 brand. As the population embraces energy drinks and smoothies spiked with whey protein, Coca-Cola has taken a hit.

No doubt, Coke, like all of us right-sided 50 year olds, will figure out how to reinvent itself and age with grace. It’s already taken a Botox injection with its partnership of Green Mountain Coffee. So no doubt Coke will be around for a while, but it does make me wonder: will it still be in the American tapestry of familiar icons in 2114?

Maybe the revolution against sugary drinks will have been so successful that the old timers (i.e. today’s one year olds) will be reminiscing about a soft drink they heard about called Coca-Cola. Farfetched, but not unimaginable, because things always change and nothing is forever.

___________________

From Lois:
I never drank the stuff, but so many things went better with coke – movies, music … traffic circles. The brand managed to bottle more than just fizz and syrup, and for me, it was the visuals that came with Coca-Cola that remain a steadfast reflection of some of the times of my life.

Growing up, the Coca-Cola Bottling Plant was a beacon on the Asbury Park Circle. It was where Route 66 met Route 35, and when giving directions to anyone who was a novice with the navigation of a New Jersey traffic circle, the building was a landmark; the swirly script of red letters a signpost:

“Go the the right,” or “Go to the left,” of the “Coca-Cola building,” I would say.

Today, the building is still there, but it’s shuttered and an eyesore. Coca-Cola left in 2011, and like the traffic circle that it had decorated for decades, it will most likely, and soon, become a thing of the past.

And then there’s the bottles. And all that they have spawned (coke-bottle glasses and green sea glass for starters). What was, and what remains, one of my very favorite movies, is the 1981 foreign film from South Africa, “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” about a coveted coke bottle and its impact on the human condition. The film’s director, Jamie Uys, decided the coke scenes in the movie should be centered around African Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. He went on an exhaustive search to find, and eventually film, “the real thing”:

So, while we’re at it, and for old times’ sake, let’s join virtual hands, and sing, in harmony, for the love of Coca-Cola:

The Smoke and Mirrors of ‘Beauty’

07 Friday Mar 2014

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Beauty in the mirror

Let’s put beauty in the eyes of the older.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Recently, while sitting at a bar with a 62-year-old male friend, he looked at the ebullient, smooth-skinned, 20-something bartender, then looked at me, and said: “Ah, to be young and beautiful again, right?”

“Been there, done that,” I said. “If she’s lucky, she’ll be 59 some day.”

While I don’t see myself as falling victim to the coveting of youth, and I’ve held on to my wrinkles (for now), I was never a Hollywood sexpot. And I’m not 81. Like Kim Novak.

That collective consciousness that judges women by how they look, was shoved, at Ms. Novak’s expense, in the faces of anyone who watched the Academy Awards last week, and was privy to the subsequent chatter, tweets, blogs, and mean-girl bashing about the pillowed lips, the skin-tight cheeks, and the raised eyebrows of Ms. Novak.

While I admit to having been taken aback at first by her looks, the irony and the hypocrisy of my reaction quickly took center stage. What happened to what we all know, and learned in kindergarten – don’t judge a book by its cover?

And don’t assume Ms. Novak sees herself as so many others did – the aging screen siren, who can’t face the truth, or much less a mirror, so she, out of desperation to stay young and beautiful, altered her face ineffably.

I applaud her, and I choose to believe she feels good about how she looks. She felt confident enough to face a Hollywood audience mostly half her age, and less.

Let’s add women who choose to take advantage of the latest dermatological advances to the list of the non-judged – to the list of those who know that aging gracefully is not about how others perceive you, or how much you choose to nip, tuck, pull, plump, lift, or allow to sag, but how you feel about yourself, and how you are allowed to take steps to maintain that credo in whatever way you choose.

A little pearl of prudence did roll out from under all this fray in the form of 31-year-old Lupita Nyong’o, and her speech at a Black Women in Hollywood luncheon days before the awards. It centered around her wish, when she was a young girl to “wake up lighter skinned,” and how it took “validation” from “a celebrated model …” to pull herself up and out of that … seduction of inadequacy.”

“…she was dark as night,” Ms. Nyong’o said. “I couldn’t believe that people were embracing a woman that looked so much like me as beautiful. Now I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the far-away gatekeepers of beauty.”

While Ms. Nyong’o’s words are a wretched, and disgraceful, reminder that even a by-any-standards-breathtakingly-beautiful (inside and out, it appears) young woman can fall victim to the societal “rules” of beauty, it also highlights her emergence away from that, and a grasping of the wisdom that, simply, beauty really does come from within.

This conversation is nothing new. But I’m hoping that the timing of Ms. Novak’s public thrashing, which came on the heels of Ms. Nyong’o’s personal confession, will at least nudge this next generation of women to kick that societal pendulum, which has been frozen closer to “you’re inadequate,” towards “everyone is beautiful.”

And I hope I’m lucky enough to be 80 someday.

On Meat and Men: I’ve Caved

06 Thursday Feb 2014

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loves meat 3BY LOIS DESOCIO

I am woman. Give me meat.

This girly-girl has recently gone Paleolithic. It started at a recent birthday dinner. It was at a steakhouse. As a lover of everything about a steakhouse (the dark wood, the long bar, the abundance of men) except steak, I’ve always been the odd woman out by ordering fish or pasta.

“Because you only order steak at a steakhouse,” has been the retort to my comments on the badly turned-out fish, or the limp and over-laden pasta that is usually standard fare at a steakhouse.

So that night, for the first time (I believe ever), I caved in, and proclaimed from my new “What-the-hey-I’m-59,” mountaintop:

“I’ll have the Blackened Rib Eye!” (Smothered in onions, mushrooms, and a Jack Daniels demi-glaze.)

It was good – good enough. But what struck me that night, and has stuck with me a month later, is what didn’t stick with me that night – the puffy, sloth-like aftermath of my usual order of a loaf of bread with a bowl of pasta, or anything with a glob of melted cheese on top.

I ate half the steak, and all of the accompanying broccoli. I got full fast, and stayed that way until the next day. (No late night, pasta-leftover, round-two in front of the TV.)

egg meatSo now I’m on a roll. I recently took the load of leftover sausage that was in my freezer from Christmas, put on Dean Martin (whose voice makes me cave), and hacked and clawed the casing from the sausage, pummeled and pounded it into a circle, mushed it together with the foraged-for-and-handpicked-from-the-local-market (which I walked to) cremini mushrooms – and baked it with an egg on top. The recipe is in line with the revival of the Paleo, or Caveman, diet).

And since it’s pretty much a done deal that we all have a ” … little bit of Neanderthal in us …“, I see nothing amiss about replacing my oatmeal, or leftover-quinoa breakfast, with a big turkey drumstick.

turkey leg

Breakfast.

So my life-long sidestep around meat may have taken a turn. In spite of descending from a family that loves liver, I’ve never craved a mutton chop like I do a potato chip. I’ve never said, “Yum,” at the sight of a blood-red Porterhouse. Meat is not crunchy enough for me, nor as consoling as a carbohydrate. But now, I’ve learned that the beauty of meat lies in its ability to satiate with just a small portion.

I now feel leaner than ever. I’ve trimmed most of the fat that had inched-up and stuck to my middle after the Christmas carbo-overload.

And, to be honest, a T-Bone is actually more in sync with the primitive, inner me; that cave-man girl. The one who doesn’t crave a knight in shining armor, but whose appetite has always been whetted by a hulk of a man who grunts just to her, and drags her off into his man cave to share his meat.

I Want to Slide Down Something!

23 Thursday Jan 2014

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Sleds

Poised for action. Butts needed.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

This is the winter of my dreams. I love the cold. I love the snow. But what is bringing me down faster than a good pair of Rossignols on a black diamond is that no one will play in the snow with me. My friends say they’re too old. My kids say they’re too old.

I was an avid skier for most of my life. It’s been five years, or more, since I’ve skied. Because apparently, it is not all downhill from here for most late-50 Boomers, who seem to think we’re too old to do anything but bemoan the snow. After all, it’s a slippery slope just walking out the door for us old-timers. Phooey!

While the huge group of reliable ski buddies from the past has dwindled down to practically zero due to age, illness, physical incapacitation, and even death, I have been know to beg anyone who seems somewhat game:

“We’ll ski easy (with helmets!) for an two hour or two, and then we can apres ski for the rest of the day.”

No bites.

But since I’ve recently moved within walking distance to one of the best sledding hills in New Jersey, and because I can potentially hit the hill while it’s still a virgin, I’ve decided to take the sled by the (plastic) reins and be prepared for the next snowfall.

I bought two steerable Snow Seats (good for anyone over six), and I will head out solo next snowfall if I have to. I’ve accepted that it will be without the shared adrenaline rush, the (“Did you see that!”) double wipeouts;face plants. No getting airborne side-by-side.

And when it’s all over, I guess I’ll have to learn how to drink that hot-and-spiked anything by myself, and rehash, in my mind only, how much fun I had, and the absolute joy that playing in the snow brings.

Michelle, Let’s ‘Tini

17 Friday Jan 2014

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She dances too. Photo courtesy of theguardian.com.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

First Lady Michelle Obama turns 50 today. Front and center in today’s New York Times is a feature about how she’s “finding her own path.” But what impressed me most about this piece is what reporter Jennifer Steinhauer, and her editor, chose as the lede. Because what it put front and center, and told us at the top, is that Ms. Obama is a girlfriend.

She has perfected a mean forehand, is working on her yoga poses, dishes with girlfriends over brussels sprouts and dirty martinis (one olive) at the Mediterranean hotspot Zaytinya, pushes her two daughters to play two sports — one of her choosing and one of theirs — and said this week that the wonders of modern dermatology, like Botox, are in the realm of possibility for her.

While I’m already a fan of hers (even more so, since I’ve learned, like me, she “dishes” over dirty martinis), I’m giving her an extra nod because she’s in touch with her female-friendship side – crucial for aging well. Smart women know this.

And while this is not new news, and I realize Julie and I trumpet incessantly about how much we love, and need, our girlfriends, its value is always worth noting. Let this piece on our first lady nudge all women in middle age to put front and center – along with keeping ourselves fit, eating right, staying mentally engaged, nurturing our families, saving the planet, doing for those less fortunate – time with our gal pals.

So Happy Birthday, Ms. Obama. (Can I call you Michelle?)