Owner: All The T URL:http://allthet.blogspot.com Join Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:13:02 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Unique, often humorous take on life experiences and events from award-winning author and journalist, Jane Leder. The 60 something survivor of the 1960s (Whew!) rarely considers herself too seriously and encourages readers to "Take her advice because Site statistics:Click here
IN MY LIBERAL HEART OF HEARTS 2008-03-05 13:55:00 Okay. I admit it. In my liberal heart of hearts, I'd hoped that Tuesday's primaries would have bumped Hillary out of the race. But she took the knives out of the kitchen drawer and lives to see another day.You could feel the tide turning: the photo of Obama in traditional Somali attire that mysteriously found its way onto the Drudge Report and then into America's living rooms; the "3 a.m." ad put out by the Clinton campaign that roiled up fear of Obama's "inexperience" when it comes to national security; the pregnant pause when Clinton was asked about Obama's religion, (Could he really be a Muslim?), and the leaked memo stating that Obama's talk about changing NAFTA was strictly "political."That was all it took to give Clinton a razor-thin win in Texas and a much larger-than-expected w
Gyro What? 2008-02-27 18:14:00 What in the world are these people doing? Are they out of their minds? Is this some weird form of torture? Or a new form of exercise for the criminally insane?Nope. This is Gyrotonic. And believe it or not, it rocks.My world of exercise was shrinking fast. A chronic lower back problem forced me to give up Pilates. All those moves with legs overhead and a slow, vertebra by vertebra descent were more painful than multiple shots of Novacaine at the hands of a sadistic dentist. Then a bum knee hampered my developing yoga practice, turning Warrior poses into Wimp poses. What was I, a believer in regular exercise, to do?The answer came in the form of three people perched on what looked like contemporary torture racks - though none of the apparent students evidenced any pain. Instead, t
Bounce Your Boobies II 2008-02-27 17:44:00 Just days after blogging about the trials and tribulations of growing older, growing bigger, and the necessity of buying a new bra, I saw the premier of "In The Family." It took . . . oh, maybe a mono second before any silly remnants of self-pity disappeared.This new documentary film to air on PBS's "POV" sometime this fall follows the journey of the filmmaker, Joanna Rudnick, and several other women who suspect that they have inherited the breast cancer mutation (BRCA) that will increase their chances exponentially of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer.The odds are bad: mutation of the BRCA 1 gene raises a woman's lifetime risk of ever developing breast cancer from an average of about 7% to 8% in the general female population to a terrifying 80% to 85%. The lifetime risk of ovarian Read more:Bounce
Dead Serious: Suicide 2008-02-13 10:31:00 Almost 30 years ago, my brother stuck a hunting rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He died instantly.Each of my family members handled their grief differently and, for the most part, alone. Not until I wrote a book called Dead Serious
did we begin to share the hurt, anger, aching sadness, and endless unanswered questions. Why, when he seemed to have emerged from a serious depression, did he take his life? With the support of a loving family and friends, how he could have seen death as the right path? How could he have been so selfish? Didn't he know the pain he would leave behind?We'll never have a chance to ask my brother those questions; we are left with coming to an uneasy truce, each in our own way. There will never be a complete resolution.When the phone call came in las Read more:Suicide
The Winter Blues 2008-02-07 16:54:00 (photo by Jane Leder)As of last evening, we'd had exactly 11 minutes of sunshine in the month of February. Eleven precious minutes! That's just about enough time to rifle through my purse, dig out my sunglasses, clean off the lipstick smudges, and walk out the door. By then, the clouds that had so mercifully parted converge in a devious plot to once again eclipse the sun.Ever since my mid-thirties, I've suffered a mild case of Seasonal Affective Depression, or SAD. Come about November, my energy level drops, I usually gain weight, I get tired more easily, and, in general, I'm not my usual bubbly, optimistic, charming self.I'm not alone: some 10 million Americans - 70 to 80 percent of them women - suffer from SAD. An even larger number sing the "winter blues." Scientists aren't exact Read more:Blues
The Luxury of Choice 2008-02-06 09:32:00 As one pundit put it last night, "This year Democrats have the luxury of choice."Remember the cast of presidential hopefuls just four years ago: Kerry, Sharpton, Kucinich, Edwards, Dean, Clark, Lieberman, Gephardt, Braun, and Graham? A black man, a woman, a Jew (an orthodox, no less), and a supposed kook who'd seen flying saucers - none of them had a chance. And when the presumptive front runner started "screaming" after his big win in Iowa, he was toast.And then there were five. Democrats weighed the pros and cons of each, desperate to nominate someone who could defeat Bush and end the debacle fashioned by Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, and the other neo-conservatives who took us to war in Iraq, left Afghanistan to fend for itself, gave tax breaks to the rich, supported big corporations, Read more:Choice
, Luxury
WRINKLES DON'T HURT: SAYS WHO? 2008-01-25 09:45:00 You stare in the mirror and confront the laugh lines that stay put when life's no longer a laughing matter. Or you zip up a pair of jeans, tugging a bit too hard over the soft, rounded belly that refuses to respond to sit-ups, crunches, or diets. The lines on your chest from too much sun conjure up horror images of leather-skinned ladies from Miami Beach. Or the lines circling your neck like an umbilical chord make you want to strangle yourself. It's a challenge to accept these physical badges of experience and wisdom and not see them as flashing neon signs that scream out, "You ain't no spring chicken anymore!" These moments when you see yet another sign of aging have been dubbed by some as "age jumps." Just when you've settled down and accepted whatever the pull of gravity, the rava
SLEEPING BEAUTY HAS A SLEEP TEST 2008-01-24 08:03:00 I've been wrecking my husband's sleep for years - probably decades. I snore just like 24% of adult American women. Not every night. Sometimes, not more than heavy breathing. But when I get going I apparently sound like an old geezer honking away. I've tried lubricating mouth spray, Breathe Right Strips ( a barely more humane form of close pins on the nose), special pillows, a snore guard, and herbs. Nothing worked. (In full disclosure, I did lose the snore guard about a year or so ago.) With the odds of nights spent in my own bed with my husband less and less favorable than nights alone with my cat in the guest bedroom, I gave in to the possibility that sleep apnea might be the culprit and agreed to do a sleep test. For the same outrageously-high fee of $2300 (before hoped-for i
Freelancing Is For The Birds 2008-03-12 12:16:00 For the umpteenth time in my twenty-seven-year career as a freelancer, I'm plum out of work. And 2008 began with such promise. Checks from a 2007 gig still coming in and the dangling carrot of those proverbial new assignments. Nothing to fret about. Hell, I could use a little time off.But a little time off has turned into too much time on my hands and way too many bills.Last year, I decided to chuck freelancing for a full-time job. I'd had it with just this kind of financial insecurity and creative ennui. I landed a job as a media publicist for a boutique PR firm. I'd done a fair amount of this kind of work over the years and figured a steady paycheck and the company of other creative souls would do me just fine. I quit after ten days. (You can read a spin-off article I wrote abou Read more:Birds
No title 2008-04-08 16:45:00 My mom is dying. Oh, the doctors manage to couch the truth in their own medical psycho babble: "Nothing she's suffering is life-threatening in and of itself," they say. "But she has so many problems. And she is ninety-one." Yeah, we know how old she is. We celebrated her 89th when she said it would be her last. "No one in my immediate family has ever lived this long," she said matter-of-factly. But she didn't die. Wasn't even close. Sure, her eye sight was failing; her hearing was bad. And her loyal and true mind had begun to fail her. "So," she said casually. "I can't remember the way I used to." While the rest of us struggled with her dementia, it seemed that she had made her peace. A few weeks ago (is it only a few weeks?), she suddenly had trouble walking. Her fee
The Wait 2008-05-14 13:53:00 I should have been ready. After all, I wrote a book about brothers and sisters. And, by extension, I explored parental ties. I should have been prepared. All bets are off when a parent is dying. Emotions come from left field. Patience is thin. The stress level reaches epic levels. Family members do their best to manage their fears, but there are those times when the dam breaks and all
Clearing Out 2008-06-02 14:54:00 The Herculean task of getting my parents' Florida condo ready for sale fell to my husband and me. Fair enough. My brother had just spent a month tending to my 91-year-old parents and had returned to France. My sister was running the show in Ohio, where my folks had decided to live out whatever time they have left. I had a To Do List and a game plan in mind. But when I started opening up d Read more:Clearing
Brothers and Sisters 2008-06-12 09:37:00 Yes, I wrote a book about brothers and sisters. But that was years ago; since then, I've written another book that explored love and sex during World War II and the significant changes that war created in relationships between men and women.Out of the blue, a reporter from the Toronto Star contacted me. She was writing a piece about siblings and exploring her premise that, as they age, Baby Boom Read more:Brothers
, Sisters
No title 2008-06-13 11:48:00 What does a freelancer do in her free time? She takes a Photoshop class.Who knows - maybe I'll illustrate my own writing some day. Or maybe I'll toss the pen aside for a camera.My best writing has always been highly visual. "Show don't tell" is one of the proverbial tenants of successful writing. So, in the absence of any new writing projects, I've turned to my camera and all the neat things P
No title 2008-08-21 07:02:00 It's toughest in the mornings. Upon waking - when the first conscious thoughts flood into my head - I feel last month's loss of both of my parents more than almost any other time of the day or night. This morning, I saw my mother laid out on the bed in which she'd died only minutes before. She looked lovely, washed and dressed in her favorite purple silk pajamas. The mid-afternoon summer sun b
True Love? 2008-08-26 14:34:00 Okay, my readers. You may number one or two, but still I feel an obligation to keep my blog as interesting and current as possible. And, hey, who wants to read about death and dying? That gets maudlin very quickly. But I do want to share a common response I'm getting when I mention that my dad died less than four weeks after my mom. "Well," they say. "At least, they are together again."And Read more:True Love
None of Us Wavered 2008-09-27 19:37:00 If you are reading my blog for the first time, this post will hardly reflect my often playful and humorous take on life. In July, I lost both of my parents within three plus weeks of each other. It was - and remains - a very painful, stressful time. This may be the final piece about that marker event in my life for some time. The doctor says there are few families that would have let my father
No title 2008-11-27 14:51:00 Who would have thought that I, a committed freelancer, would take a full-time gig at a Jesuit publishing house? Yep, that's exactly what I did, and I'm here to say that it was a brilliant career move. Little did I know how hungry I was for human interaction after working solo from home for 27 years. Who knew? And little did I realize that a nice Jewish girl like me could find so many fun and
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