Bunkie's Good Health Tip: Stay Indoors & Avoid Food

I'm officially now a middle-aged woman. Walk with me as I take my Inventory: raging hormones, horrible moodswings, hot flashes, pains everywhere, and a tendency to speak my mind in a very loud voice. My family walks on eggshells, my girlfriends don't see anything unusual, and total strangers think I'm a complete lunatic.

And now, we (that's the 'royal' we, and don't you forget it) have been diagnosed with Rosacea. Those fun-loving little bumps and pustules that appear smack dab in the middle of your face, for no apparent reason, just because there's a catastrophe of epic proportions occuring in my ovaries.

Who knew? I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and thought I had been Teleported back to the Land of Adolescent Acne, which as I now know, was simply a preview of the real hormonal rages to come.

I did what any self-respecting middle-aged woman with pustules on her face would do, I loudly demanded an immediate appointment with my dermatologist. It worked. He whipped out that huge 10X magnifying-glass hood, stared at my face for a few seconds, then pronounced the diagnosis. "Great!" I said. "Hand me some cream or something, so I can get rid of it."

My dermatologist smiled and took a deep breath. The kind of deep breath people take when they anticipate a killing blow. "Oh, no...I'm afraid with Roseacea, you can treat it, and you can reduce the symptoms, but there is no cure. I'm sorry to tell you this, but Roseacea can often be a side-effect of menopausal hormone activity." He smiled again. I wasn't smiling. I was trying to determine whether I could take him out with my purse...one well-placed blow to the skull...then I remembered I wanted to rip out a recipe for chocolate pie from the exam room copy of O, so I was momentarily distracted, and the dermatologist escaped with his life.

Now I have to wash my face twice a day with a soap that stinks like a basketful of rotten eggs, and the scent lingers for hours, so I'm sure people think I have really bad gas, as well as really bad manners. At night I spread this invisible sticky gel on the "affected area," which in my case, is my entire head. I admit this regimen has worked and I no longer look like a villain in a cheaply-produced Batman movie, but good grief, what else???

Always a glutton for punishment, and always one to think I can cure myself of any medical ailment, I read the pamphlets provided to me by my doctor. Here is what the pamphlet advised, to minimize and control Roseacea symptoms:

• Avoid the sun, as well as exposure to heat, cold, and wind
• Do not use any hygiene or beauty products containing alcohol
• Avoid caffeine, alcohol, chocolate, spicy foods, (i.e., anything that tastes good)
• Avoid dairy products including cheese
• Do not wear makeup or sunscreen
• Avoid over-exertion and perspiration

So! Am I living the High Life, or what?

Stop Beating (and Eating) Yourself Up!

I just spent 4 days with two very influential women in my life...my friend Jayne, who is an accomplished poet and a collaborator with me on our next hilarious book about menopause...and my friend The Clay Lady, Danielle, who has owned a successful business teaching kids how to make clay art for 23 years. Both of these women are wise, warm and hysterically funny, and like me, they understand that Chocolate is a Food Group! They get it.

The three of us hunkered down together in our little booth at Nashville's Southern Festival of Books, braving cold, rainy weather and drinking lots of hot tea. Who knows if it was the weather, or my hormones, but apparently I was doing the Self-Denigration Thing in a big way, at my own Private Pity Party, every time a friend stopped by our booth. I didn't even realize I was cutting myself down, until finally Danielle grabbed me and said "STOP! I have listened to you whine and lament your failures all weekend, and now, we're going to talk about your successes!!"

And so we did. And every time I tried to duck and run into that familiar "but" territory, where Why Me? and If Only... lurks in the shadows, Danielle simply shook her head, smiled, and insisted, "Look what you have accomplished! Look what you have achieved! In 4 years!"

It dawned on me that she is RIGHT! I am my own worst enemy! I am more successful than I ever dreamed I could be, compared to where I started 4 years ago, but instead of celebrating that success, I'm drowning in self-pity, afraid to step up to the plate and hit another home-run.

Thanks, Danielle, for slapping me into reality and out of my never-ending personal comparison to that long-suffering soul, Job! Despite my raging hormones, despite my failures and the yucky weather, or the umpteen things that can go wrong and will, I can do it!

As the great philosopher and poet Ovid said, "Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish."

How lucky I am to have fished in the pool with Danielle!

When Did Hair Removal Become So Important?

Today I received a hysterically funny email from a good friend, about a woman's attempt to use wax strips on her bikini area, and how in the process, she glued her bottom shut! Don't you just know those paramedics were howling??

Why do women put ourselves through this misery, just to remove a little hair? Isn't the hair on our bodies there for a good reason? Why is it so repulsive to us? Personally, I would love to take all the hair from my body, and glue it to my scalp, since I'm one of those lucky women who suffer from fine, thin hair with a mind of its own. I used to have lots of hair on my head...so much, in fact, I looked like a Fiji native. But then my son was born, my thyroid decided to stop functioning, and voila, now you can see the portal to my brain!

Call me indiscriminate, call me a tomboy, but in truth I am lazy, and I just don't see what all the fuss is about with respect to hair removal. I shave my legs when necessary, but I know women who shave every day! Good grief, who has time for that, let alone the lovely leg rash I'd get from daily hits with the razor! I'm probably not a good candidate to offer an opinion on bikini waxing, since the only time I was eligible to wear a bikini was when I was 5...hair is typically not a problem when you wear a size 18+ swimsuit...there's lots of extra fabric down there to cover stuff up, and let's face it, nobody's looking at you anyway!

Now that I'm officially 'middle aged,' I have discovered long, black hairs sprouting from my face and neck. For no apparent reason. Geez, am I gonna have to shave my face, too? And now that I need bifocals, or trifocals if I'm honest, isn't it FUN trying to remove those facial hairs, and navigate the mirror and the tweezers, but instead you pull out your eyelashes by mistake?

This is where I've gotta hang with the French ladies...no wonder they have so much free time to sit in cafes, bake their own bread and walk their dogs...they're not spending 3.5 hours a week removing unwanted body hair. If someone would only invent a Chocolate Hair Removal Product...then maybe I could get interested...

Extolling the Virtues of a Chocolate-Dipped Cone...

This is my "author" busy season, one in which I spend lots of time giving speeches and trying to sell books at a host of literary festivals around the country. If I'm lucky, I get put up in a nice hotel, sometimes there are pillow chocolates involved and turn-down service. Sometimes there are flies at the buffet (see Akron, previous...or better yet, let's forget about Akron) and sometimes there are fancy desserts at hoity-toity receptions with really big-name authors.

I was taught never to refuse food that is offered to you...which is why I continue to struggle with my weight! But I've recently observed that I do indeed have two sides to my personality: the Author side, where I hang with famous or-famous authors and celebrities, and we all talk about ourselves until everyone's sick to death; and the Mom side, where I do endless loads of laundry, drive carpool, and apply Band-Aids to skinned knees.

Speaking frankly, I love both worlds for what they each represent. But I gotta be honest, the desserts on the Mom side are so much better! Petit fours are all good and fine, but let's face it, you'd have to eat about 100 of them to really get enough to be satisfied. And you can't really do that in public, at a fancy reception.

But when you're a Mom, you can drive your clan to the local DQ, and treat everybody to a chocolate-dipped cone. What a simple, timeless treat! And it's dark chocolate, so it's GOOD for you! Can you imagine me filling up my Mom-mobile with a bunch of famous authors and driving them through DQ for a chocolate-dipped cone? They would curl up and die. They would lash me with their laptops.

So this weekend I'll be hanging at Nashville's Southern Festival of Books. I'll be in Booth #36, The Comma Goddesses. But pay close attention, because when I'm out walking the crowds, I'll be the one with the chocolate-dipped cone!