Cinnabon Craze

Awhile ago I wrote a post on the kale frenzy. Now I’m reporting on the Cinnabon craze. You know, that sweet confection that lures you into the shop on the concourse when you’re headed to your plane. I can’t resist Cinnabons, even though they pack on more calories than I burn off en route to my flight. This despite the fact that my gate is always at the far end of the walkway.

I can’t explain the allure of the Cinnabon. Maybe it’s the swirly intermingling of cinnamon and icing, or that soft, yeasty mouthful you get. Since I haven’t been flying much now that I’m retired, I had almost forgotten about my guilty pleasure. That was, until I read in Ad Age about products entering into licensing arrangements with the makers of this jewel. Apparently, lip balm and the Cinnapretzel movie-theater snack didn’t do well, but Air Wick and Pinnacle vodka still have projects in the oven.

The Ad Age article got me thinking about what products for retirees would be improved via a marriage with Cinnabon. My problem was not coming up with ideas. It was weeding out the weaker ones and focusing on the sure winners. I wouldn’t want mine to land on the reject heap with the lip balm and Cinnapretzel.

The first product I’ll produce is Cinnabon Odor Eaters. One of the worst offenses of older folks is smelly feet. Imagine if they gave off that delightful Cinnabon aroma instead! And the farther you walk, the stronger the smell. This will be especially useful to those traveling by air and having gate assignments like B19 and C22. It will also provide motivation to get more exercise.

Speaking of which, a companion product will be the Cinnabon treadmill roller. There’s a psychological aspect to this, too, because it will remind you of what hooked you on Cinnabons to begin with. It simulates running down the concourse to catch your flight. The longer you stay on the machine, the more realistic it is. Program in a hypothetical but realistic gate number—26 say—and the mat will keep on rolling (and emitting that wonderful scent) until you’ve run as much as you would have in the airport.

An incentive to keep those pounds off is the Cinnabon digital scale. In addition to announcing your weight when you step on this electronic device, it will give off a burst of that mouth-watering smell. If you program it properly, the more you’ve lost, the stronger the explosion. As you get closer to your target weight, you’ll get a staccato of bursts. This will be a true test of your willpower.

The new product that will be most of interest to retirees is my Cinnabon Velcro. Each time you unhook the pieces, you’ll get a whiff of Cinnabon. My neighbors will find me sitting on my porch steps, pulling and reattaching, tongue hanging out of my mouth. They’ll know I’m there before they even see (or smell) me. The telltale “rip, smoosh, rip, smoosh” will give me away.

Two items that will motivate me to clean more often are Cinnabon Windex and Cinnabon Pledge. Instead of the boring orange or lemon that those products usually have, mine will smell of cinnamon, iced sugar and freshly baked yeast bread. I’ll have the cleanest windows in the neighborhood. My sinuses will benefit as well, since there won’t be as much dust around the house.

Here’s one for all you cat owners: Cinnabon litter. When Luke (my boy) scratches, the pellets will release that delightful fragrance. The formula will be strong enough to mask that other “delightful fragrance” that announces he’s had his daily constitutional. This will be a much pleasanter alert that his bathroom station needs scooping.

A personal favorite is the Cinnabon mouse pad. The more I roll my mouse over it, the stronger the aroma. I’ll be writing up a storm, but my posts will likely have much more food-related content. It’s a good thing my office is nowhere near the pantry.

Finally, I’m working with the Post Office to develop a Cinnabon postage stamp. We’ll make it the type you have to lick, so you’ll feed two senses and get a double fix. Unfortunately, these stamps will have a “use by” date, so they won’t last forever. Let’s face it: at our age, not much lasts forever anyway.

Benefits of Sitting

For some reason the media are re-publicizing the health dangers of sitting for long periods of time. The list I heard on Live with Kelly and Michael had about ten items on it. The ones that stood out were back pains, circulatory problems (including blood clots) and constipation. In my experience, constipation and back pain usually come in tandem, so I’m note sure they should be counted as separate dangers.

In any case, this itemization of negatives completely missed the positives. As a retiree who spends more and more time sitting down, I’m compelled to put forth the contrarian argument. Staying in one place is good for your health.

Let’s face it. The older we get, the harder it is to remember whether we’re coming or going. I think it has something to do with blood rushing downstream when we stand up, leaving less of it to fuel our brain cells. Retirees’ gray matter needs more oxygen, not less, so standing and walking become a detriment to our mental health.

If we’re lucky enough to figure out where we’re headed, there’s a good chance we won’t remember why it was we went there once we arrive. That’s due in part to the “event boundary” factor, which should be familiar to those who read my post: “Thresholds, Stairs and Memory Loss”.

A logical extension of all of this is that when we’re done with whatever, we can’t remember where we’re supposed to go back to, either. You don’t need fully-oxygenated gray matter to see where I’m headed (narratively, not physically; I’m sitting down). There are clear benefits to plopping your fanny in a comfortable chair for hours at a time.

The most obvious one is that you never have to wonder if you’re coming or going, or where to or from, because you’re already there. The net result is less stress, lower blood pressure and higher self esteem. All beneficial to your physical and mental health, no matter what your age.

You can enhance the benefits with a little pre-planning. Buy a convenient tote or two—the kind that handymen and gardening hobbyists carry around. Make a list of the items you use regularly: pens, scratch pads, reading glasses, lip balm, tissues, coffee mugs—you get the idea. Fasten the list securely to the side of the tote, so you won’t have to hunt for it every day.

When you’re ready to settle in, grab the tote and look at your list. Fill the container with everything you might want to use that day. By the way, if one of the things on the list is “book I’m reading,” be sure to leave a blank line where you can pencil in the title of the book and where you set it down last. You don’t want to waste valuable sitting time trying to remember what you’re reading, or running around the house looking for it.

If you want to make this routine truly effective, install one of those new fangled pod machines and a supply of bottled water close to your nest. You’ll have fresh coffee or tea at your fingertips.

My final hint for success: get a fat, washable marker and draw a circle around your chair to delineate the area that’s within arm’s length. Position your tote, your Keurig-wannabe, your book(s), craft supplies, whatever, within the circle. You’ll be guaranteed to be able to reach everything without getting up off your ever-widening butt. Wider butts improve sitting stability, by the way.

The circle has an extra advantage. Anyone who is foolish enough to disturb you will know to stay beyond the marker line. Otherwise, you’ll be able to smack them with the fly swatter in your tote, without having to lift an inch off your chair.

So you see, staying put can offer health advantages to your friends and family, too. For inquiring minds that want to know, I’m setting up my chair area next to my wine rack. I have an easy-to-use corkscrew and a box of very long straws in my tote.

Hail Marys and Late Life Pouts

The New York Times ran an article titled “The Hail-Mary-Moon.” The phrase is a take off on the Hail-Mary-Pass. For those who need it, I give you this definition of the football play from Wikipedia. “The Hail May pass… is a very long forward pass… made in desperation with only a small chance of success, especially at or near the end of a half.”

Wikipedia tells us the phrase originally meant “any sort of desperation play.” The long-pass meaning became popular thanks to Roger Staubach, then quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. After his 1975 playoff-game-winning touchdown pass, Staubach (a good Catholic boy) was quoted as saying: "I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary." The pass was thrown from midfield with just 32 seconds left in the game. My thoughts on reading this: “Wow! There were playoff games in December in the seventies.”

Getting back to that “any sort of desperation play” definition, we return to The Hail-Mary-Moon (also sometimes called a save-cation). The article’s author, Carrie Seim, reports that for some pairs: “egged on by couples’ therapists and travel agents, the best way to address a rift in the marriage, and to see whether it can be healed, is to take a last-ditch vacation.” Having therapists and travel agents pushing these trips raises a red flag in a relationship battle for me, not a white one.

Seim provides an example of a couple married 20 years who saved their marriage by taking a cruise to Mexico. Other couples fared not so well. One pair who traveled with their best friends not only got divorced after the trip, they wound up trading partners. It seems the swaperoo was kindled during the stay-cation for two of them. The tossed aside spouses eventually found love again—with each other. Someone needs to make up a clever moon name for that outcome.

It seems a few folks try the Hail-Mary-Moon because they think it will be cheaper than a divorce. Talk about something done “in desperation with only a small chance of success.” Call me a cynic, but if you’re doing this because of your wallet, I think you need more like a Novena-Moon.

Apparently it’s not just the authors of newspaper articles that noticed this trend. Screenwriters are onto it, too. A new film called Le Week-End follows an older British couple who decide to spend their 30^th wedding anniversary where went on their honeymoon—Paris. Their expectation is to either refurbish their frayed marriage or face the fact that the music is over. I’ve not seen the movie, but it sounds like they go on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and expectations.

The site RogerEbert.com awards the film three and a half stars (out of four), but the LATimes.com snarks that it is “sour and misanthropic” and “unremittingly bleak.” This contrast in reviews strikes me as an apt metaphor for many marriages that are coming unraveled: one partner finds the daily familiarity to be peachy, the other picks at the sour grapes of predictability.

To up your chances of success rekindling a fading romance, check out Elle.com’s “Real Beauty.” The subject of a recent email read: “How to get the perfect crimson pout.” Elle.com tells us: “When it comes to makeup, nothing rivals the power of a red lip. A crimson pout will… up your sex factor.” I’ll bet. The article lists the red lipstick choices of ten celebrities, but not much else.

I found helpful advice on lifestyle.ca.msn.com. From makeup artist Emily Kate Warren: "Gently rub lips with a warm, wet washcloth before you apply any color." The site tells us to “let your lips go a bit slack” to get an even application. According to CoverGirl makeup artist Molly Stern, "Puckering too much makes it hard to get a perfect finish." I don’t know about you, but I’ve always avoided over-puckering.

The take away from all of this seems to be that, if your marriage has become too comfortable, you need to escape your daily rut to get a fresh start. Other than the clever “moon” label and new lipstick colors, I’m not sure why this is newsworthy. It stands to reason that if a relationship is no longer working, you need to change things up. Either get away separately, or go away together. And call it whatever.

Frankly, I’d be happy to claim that my marriage is on the rocks if I thought it would get me a trip to Paris. I’ll go with or without my husband, though I’d prefer with. If it will help make it happen, I’ll say ten Hail Marys. Glory be and hallelujah! Excuse me while I go practice my pout.

Perks of Retirement

A post on a friend’s Facebook page got me thinking about the perks of retirement. The friend isn’t retired; she’s still required to get out of bed every weekday to go to an office somewhere. That’s part of what motivated her comment on this recent frigid morning. “I wished I could crawl back in bed, pull the covers over my head and hibernate until it’s over.”

My immediate reaction was: “Hibernation! What a great idea! Now that I’m retired, I could actually do that all winter if I really wanted to.” It’s not likely I’ll choose to hibernate, but the option is there for me. At the very least, I can do that pull-the-covers-over-my-head thing. If I put out enough dry food and several bowls of fresh water for my cat, Luke, I could borrow like that for days. If it’s really cold, I could probably get Luke to cuddle under there with me awhile. Double perk.

We’re ready to list our house for sale (again). My real estate agent plans to stop by today to drop off some paperwork. Since I’m on the computer in my basement office, it will take me a few minutes to get upstairs to answer the door. I told her to call me when she’s in front of the house so I can meet her at her car. (She’s recovering from some surgery.) This put another perk of retirement into my head.

When I’m not expecting anyone, I don’t have to answer the door if I’m busy or too lazy to go upstairs. Or downstairs. Or get up from the kitchen table. If it turns out it was someone I know—a friend or a neighbor, say—I can always tell her we must have been out of town. Retirees go out of town at the drop of a hat. Are relatives looking to visit for a few days and I don’t want them around? I’ll say we decided to head south to escape the snow. Or to see a city that’s on our bucket list.

Retirees are expected to have a bucket list. One from which they’re actively checking things off (before they check out). We don’t have a bucket list, but this could be another perk of retirement. First, that we’re entitled to lie about things, like being out of town and having lists of any kind. Second, that we can take the time to put together a bucket list. And then make and execute plans to tick things off. Or ignore it altogether. Whatever.

Some about-be-retirees look forward to having more time to cook. Perhaps to sign up for a couples’ cooking class. Or take chefs’ classes at Le Cordon Bleu. By the way, the website Chefs.com takes you to Le Cordon Bleu’s Bleu Ribbon Kitchen. Not “Blue Ribbon.” And not “Bleu Ruban.” Aside from the inconsistency of languages used, isn’t “cordon” just another French word for “ribbon”? It means “rope” or “cord,” after all. So, Le Cordon Bleu Bleu Ribbon Kitchen is “the blue ribbon blue ribbon kitchen.”

I find this annoying, but I digress. Getting back to perks. My retirement is a time to stock up the freezer with Kashi dinners and not feel guilty when I don’t prepare proper meals three nights in a row. Or longer. Except for Luke’s of course.

The more I think about them, the more I like these perks of retirement. Once we sell the house and downsize out of Rhode Island, the possibilities will increase. For one thing, I’ll be able to get my husband away from his store. He still goes to work every morning and he’s there about 90 hours a week. When that’s in our rearview, we can enjoy the perks together. On frigid mornings, I might even get him to cuddle under the covers with Luke and me. There’s one for my bucket list.

Budgeting Tools

One of the most important skills a recent or soon-to-be retiree must master is budgeting. First you have to determine how much income you can reasonably count on after you stop working full time. Then you have to figure out how you will spend it. Alternately, you can decide what you need (or want) to spend in retirement, and then wrack your brain over where the heck that amount of money will come from. Which generally leads to rethinking how much you really need to spend.

There are many books and websites to help with this planning. But few of them provide tools to help you sequester your funds into the categories you’ve identified in your retirement budget. A commercial from the financial services company ING offers an unusual suggestion. Money earmarked for retirement is colored orange (the same as ING’s logo). That doesn’t seem practical. Plus U.S. Code Title 18 Section 333 tells us it’s illegal to deface U.S. currency.

Specifically: “Whoever mutilates,… disfigures, or… does any other thing to any bank bill… issued by… the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such… unfit to be reissued, shall be fined… or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.” There’s room for interpretation about what rendering money “unfit to be reissued” means, but I don’t think Uncle Sam would look kindly on dying our money orange.

That left me pondering other tools to help retirees set aside income earmarked for specific expenses. I’m reminded of something from my childhood. When I was 3, we moved from a suburb of Newark, New Jersey to live year round in the summer cottage my father had built in northern Jersey. He winterized it gradually and for years we had a potbellied stove in the living room to provide extra heat.

At the time, my father’s method of budgeting was manila envelopes. Every payday, he put cash into “files” labeled mortgage, groceries, oil, etc. The stove was still with us in the early 1950’s when he finally opened a checking account. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s website tells us: “Checking accounts in the United States almost doubled between 1939 and 1952,” so my father was a late adopter. The FRBA site credits the growth after 1952 to the advent of MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition).

MICR not withstanding, I’m not sure what led to the switch from cash to checks in our household. We lived in God’s country, with just a Catholic Church and a bar (the neighborhood essentials) in our hamlet. My father commuted to work by car about three hours a day round trip. Perhaps a bank branch with convenient hours opened en route. What I do know is that, once he had the checking account, he ceremoniously burned the now-obsolete manila envelopes in the potbelly.

I must have been around 7 then and I was thrilled to be allowed to help out. My father retrieved any important contents from the envelopes and gave the empties to me to bundle for him to burn. Imagine my excitement when I discovered a five-dollar bill still inside one! I didn’t get to keep the money, but I never forgot the “attaboy” from my father. (He did not bestow praise gratuitously.)

Looking back, I realize my mother was probably behind the switch to checking. She might have had her eye on one of those toasters that banks gave out in the early fifties for newly opened accounts. More likely she decided she wanted to free up space in the living room, because the stove disappeared soon after the burning ritual.

This brings me to some tools for sequestering money into budgeted slots. One solution (an improved version of my father’s manila envelopes) is to put the cash into see-thru Ziploc bags marked for each item. You can also use empty pill bottles. Match the vitamin letter to the budget category: E for electric, C for cell phone, Multi for mortgage. Or prescriptions: Hydrocodone for house repairs, Lipitor for lawn care, Plavix for physicians. You get the idea.

I especially like the Sock Solution, because it takes care of another problem: mismatched socks. The ones whose mate disappeared, but the minute you throw it out, the lost one will show up. Stuff your cash into socks labeled for each budget category. Knot the ends and stow them in a drawer marked “Budget.”

Alternately, open new checking accounts earmarked just for each specific need. (Good luck keeping them straight.) The bank might even give you a thermal mug. Or a polar fleece blanket. But don’t expect a toaster.

Thresholds, Stairs and Memory Loss

Retirement finds most of us spending more time in our homes, making us aware of how frequently we forget where we’re headed when we go from one room to another. You might think this is because we’re home more often. Turns out, there’s a scientific reason for this memory gap.

The University of Notre Dame published a study some years ago that has only now come to my attention. The author is Professor Gabriel Radvansky, and his ND webpage tells us his research “is aimed at understanding… how younger and older adults differ on their use of mental models.” I’m sure this is a fascinating field, but I’m mostly interested in his paper: “Walking through doorways causes forgetting.”

In that study, subjects either walked through a doorway to another room to get something, or they walked the same distance within a room. Those who crossed a threshold (what Radvansky calls an “event boundary”) showed more memory loss than those who walked within a room. He concluded that these event boundaries compartmentalize activities in the mind, filing them in separate mental spaces. This impedes the ability to retrieve thoughts or decisions made in a different room.

His conclusion comes as no surprise to me. In fact, I can add to his findings. The more doorways you walk through, the harder it is to remember what you started out planning to do. We have a big house (please, Lord, not for much longer). I have things going on from the basement to the third floor and the two floors in between. I rarely get through a day without forgetting which floor I’m headed to, never mind for what reason. The further I have to go, the more likely I am to forget why before I get there.

Speaking of floors, stairs are another major “event boundary.” If something requires me to hit the stairs, chances are I’m going to forget what it was that put me there. If I’m lucky enough to remember why I’ve arrived on an upper floor, I’ll likely realize I left an important paper in the basement from whence I set out. Or I need a tool that’s in a closet or drawer on a lower floor.

Luke’s nail clippers, for instance. He’s usually on one of the second floor beds, but his clippers are in a cabinet off the kitchen. I’m not likely to forget why I’m carrying a bowl of his food upstairs. But it can take weeks before I put the notion of carrying the clippers with me into the equation. Note to self: why not store the extra pair of clippers in the linen closet between the bedrooms? Second note to self: remember where you just put that first note.

I think I know why stairs are such a major contributor to forgetfulness, other than Radvansky's research or Murphy’s Law. It has to do with this charming A. A. Milne poem:

Half way down the stairs is a stair where I sit.

There isn’t any other stair quite like it.

I’m not at the bottom; I’m not at the top.

So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs isn’t up and it isn’t down.

It isn’t in the nursery; it isn’t in the town.

And all sorts of funny thoughts run round my head.

It isn’t really anywhere! It’s someplace else instead!”

There you have it. We lose our minds on stairs because when we get halfway from here to there we’re nowhere. And our minds are happy to join us there.

This leads to the conclusion that the best way to deal with these event boundaries is to eliminate them from our homes. In other words, when we retire, we should adopt an open floor plan: one enormous room with no doorways and no stairs. My husband loves that loft-style architecture. Me, not so much.

If you’re giving this careful thought, you’ve probably realized that there needs to be at least one door: to the bathroom. Chances are, we won’t forget why we were headed there, no matter how many trips we make in a day. For most of us, that’s one thing to be thankful for. Of course, when we come out of the bathroom, figuring out where to go back to is something else entirely. That's what sticky notes are for. Note to self: add post-its to shopping list.

Weight Loss Wardrobes

The number that the scale recorded at last year’s annual physical shocked me into the realization that I needed to lose weight. A lot of weight. Knowing that it gets harder and harder to accomplish this the older we get, I decided it was time to develop a plan. My goal was to lose 30 pounds before my mid-year checkup and another 10 to 15 by the next annual physical. I came close, losing 28 by mid-year; there’s still three months ‘til my annual. Along the way, I learned some things about weight loss and wardrobes.

Some of the discoveries were good news; some not so great. On the plus side (or not so plus anymore), my calves are finally sized for regular width boots. Before the diet, I could fit into only the wide width styles, but those were so wide, it looked like I was wearing funnels on my legs. So, I stopped wearing high boots, traded them for mukluks and muttered to myself “function over form”. On the minus side, I tossed my regular width boots when I de-cluttered the house to list it, so I’m still wearing mukluks.

Staying with footwear, I also learned that being thinner means my taller socks last longer. Before the diet, my calves stretched out the elastic at the top of my socks within a season. The socks then slipped down into puddles at my ankles. The good news is that with my newly slimmed legs, the elastic in my high socks will last for years. The bad news is that if I diet until I reach my goal, my calves may get so slim the socks will fall down anyway. Garters, anyone?

Moving up my body to slacks, I’m down about two sizes over all, though my waist is apparently on a different schedule from the rest of me. As with the boots, I got rid of much of my too-small wardrobe in preparation for our downsizing. I did save a few pairs of favorite slacks in hopes I could squeeze into them again someday. As it happens, most of those are summer weight.

I need to paint a picture here of how my pants fit as my weight goes up and down. The ideal look is to have them drape in a way that tastefully sculpts my behind. When I put on a few pounds, we get more of a clutching than sculpting. At my extreme weight, the pants were clinging for dear life. Needless to say, I was looking forward to having things fit more tastefully again.

This week I decided to visit the cedar closet on our third floor; that’s where I store my off-season wardrobe. Spring will be here in two or three months and I wanted to see what might fit me this year. I found two pairs of pants that I had kept in the “hope springs eternal” section of the closet. With great anticipation, I tried them on. Keep in mind that there is snow on the ground, and more coming. So there’s no chance of wearing these yet.

Imagine my dismay when I discovered that my lower torso had passed right through “drape” to “droop” where these beloved pants were concerned. They’re passable enough for me to wear them now (barely), but now is not when I need summer weight clothes. Who knows how bad the droop will be after two or three more months of dieting? I refuse to give up on them, however, and I’m considering investing in one of those “Kim Kardashian” butt enhancers that you see on late-night TV.

I’m faring better with some of my favorite jackets. In addition to dieting, I’ve been using hand weights most mornings. My hope is to get some definition to my upper arms and avoid that bat-wing look that we older women get. Extreme weight loss can lead to excess flesh, so if you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it. I doubt I’ll be running around sleeveless anytime soon, although you never know. Read on.

One of the other articles of clothing nostalgia in that “hope springs eternal” section was a tank top from Club Med. It has a visual pun on the front, and the explanation (in French) on the back. I couldn’t bear to part with it. There’s a certain allure to French women, after all, even when they’re Italian. The tank doesn’t go with those pants that droop, but maybe I’ll wear it with them anyway. Perhaps it will direct peoples’ eyes upwards. But if that Kardashian butt enhancer does its job, I’ll probably keep my jacket on.

Hope does indeed spring eternal.

Bow Tie Renaissance

A news feature that caught my attention reported on a surge in bow tie sales. They interviewed two young men who had purchased Beau Ties Limited of Vermont in late 2012 from an elderly gent who was retiring. He had wanted to sell his ‘baby’ to people who would nourish it as carefully as he had and keep the ties American-sourced and handmade. Based on the feature, he succeeded.

The sampling of silk prints I saw was mouthwatering and prompted me to do some research. I found a variety of bow-tie styles and ways to wear them. Since older gentlemen gravitate to the bow, I’ve put together a handy style reference guide. I won’t be covering bow ties interpreted in wood or feathers. Likewise not hokey ones with blinking lights. And certainly not ones tied onto parts of the anatomy other than men’s necks. (Sorry, ladies.)

When we hear “bow tie, ” most of us picture The Professor. It’s tied neatly, but it’s often worn crooked. For reference, check out Harrison Ford in the earlier scenes in the first Indiana Jones, or David McCallum in the hit TV show NCIS.

We may also imagine The Preppy Old-Boy style, with its angled repp stripe a la Brooks Brothers. These come straight or with rakishly pointed ends.

The Neck Pincher is a poorly-worn variation of The Professor. Its most famous wearer is Paul Rubens, aka Pee Wee Herman. The pinching has nothing to do with the thickness of the wearer’s neck and it differs from the Wattle Anchor (see below). The Pincher is simply a bow tie worn too tightly or a tie that is far too small in proportion to the wearer’s physique and appears to be pinching him.  

Some interesting bow tie shapes are the Butterfly, The Fan and The Poufy Gift Bow. Note the features that differentiate them. The Butterfly is a full style, usually with two soft bumps on each outer edge. The Fan is often confused with The Butterfly, but The Fan has sharp folds and doesn’t dip in the center of the outer edges. The Poufy Gift Bow has three soft bumps, one of which may be almost imperceptible.

 

The Accordion is sometimes mistaken for The Fan, but it’s a flatter style, with straighter edges. Sometimes The Accordion is actually flat but achieves the folded look through a printed pattern.

The Wattle Anchor is worn by men whose necks have given up trying to look good in any type of tie. When gentlemen reach this point, they often start wearing a bow tie at the base of their wattle, in hopes of directing attention away from the droop. Their shirt neck does not gap (yet). For reference, we have the midlife Winston Churchill (who always had a wattle), an ignominious to-be-nameless former president of Brown University, and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey in the movie 42. 

Do not confuse The Wattle Anchor with The Old Geezer, our final style. Again, these are similar ties, but The Old Geezer is worn by men who have decided to give their wattle some breathing room. There is never a pinch of the neck with this later style, and not much of an attempt to hide the wattle. The tie is more of a celebration of it. Churchill in his later years converted to Old Geezers from his earlier Wattle Anchors. The same tie can be used as a Wattle Anchor or as an Old Geezer, depending on how it’s worn.

You may notice that I haven’t mentioned clip-on ties. They’re as bad as clip-on suspenders. If you don’t feel qualified to tie a bow, have it tied by your haberdasher. Then have it converted to a strap that hooks at the back of your neck. It will be easy to put on and will look almost as good as the real thing.

But let’s face it. There’s no substitute for learning to properly tie a bow tie. It’s like learning to pour a proper cup of tea or the perfect head on a draft beer. Or in my mind, pairing the right wine with dinner. On that note…

Fear of Balding

Through most of my life, the physical feature in which I took the most pride was my hair. OK. Maybe that alternated with my eyes, which are so dark a brown they’re almost black. Like pools in a rock quarry. But I had no control over my eyes. My hair, on the other hand, I could cut short, grow long, style up or leave down. All of which I did over time. And did again.

Colgate-Palmolive, where I worked for 17 years, had a Christmas doll pageant. The company purchased doll bodies which the employees dressed for children in poor communities. Handmade outfits competed for prizes in various categories and winners were photographed. It gave me a visual history of my changing styles, from updos and hair so long I could sit on it, to short, professional cuts that look almost androgynous.

 

Shortly after I left Colgate, I was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer. Chemotherapy left me temporarily bald. Surprisingly, this did not distress me. Perhaps that was because I had the (probably mistaken) notion that I looked cute bald. Or exotic or artsy or just interesting. This was around the time the duck-fuzzed Sinead O’Connor was in her heyday.

In my book, Cancer: A Coping Guide, I recount the story of my mother’s reaction to seeing me bald.

Once, when I visited my mother and had my head covered with a scarf, I could tell that she was curious to see what my bald head looked like underneath. I told her I’d show her, if she promised not to cry when she saw it. She said she wouldn’t. As soon as I took off the scarf, her mouth started to crinkle up. “Here come the waterworks,” I thought. But instead, she burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

When my hair grew back in, I kept it long for awhile. My mother nagged me to cut it short. She may have laughed at my bald head, but she never liked the way I looked with long tresses. I reminded her that I was forced to go without hair for over a year. I just wanted to be able to run my fingers through it and really brush it for a change.

Eventually, I tired of long styles again and had it cut. My mother was right, of course. I do look better with it short. It’s been at least a dozen years since I’ve had locks down to my shoulders or longer. Let’s face it: older women look better with shorter dos. Most of them they dye their hair lighter, hoping the color will blend with their increasingly visible scalp.

One reason my hair was special was that I had extremely thick tresses. I followed the daily toilette prescribed by my Madison Avenue stylist, George Michael. (He serviced one style and one style only: long and straight.) His directive: lean forward, head down, and brush from the nape to the ends 100 times every day, using a natural bristle brush. I kept doing this even with short dos until around the time I retired. Then I got lazy.

Whether a consequence of my laziness, or an inevitable aspect of aging, I can’t say. But my hair has become finer and less populous. I worry that I’m going bald. The strays left in the shower drain when I wash my locks are forming ever-larger clumps. There is no pouf left in my crown. Every morning, the mirror reveals a demoralizing reflection of “bed hair” or “pillow head” or whatever you choose to call that look that says: “I didn’t bother to brush it or comb it. What’s the point? It has a mind of its own.”

In the winter, there’s also static electricity. Thin wisps rise up in drafts of heated air, leaving me looking like a psychotic Alfalfa from Our Gang. If I dampen them to kill the static, my hair flattens and I look even more like I’m balding. All year long, I find strands on my clothes. Occasionally, it’s a really long one that has somehow remained embedded in the loops of an old sweater, reminding me of what my crown jewel used to look like. Mostly, they just remind me that they’re falling out.

I cannot ignore it any longer. I am going bald. And at a rapidly increasing pace. Perhaps if I return to that daily ritual of brushing 100 times, I can slow the process. I wonder what my mother would think about this. She’d probably tell me to dye my hair light and get a perm. (She thought that curls hid her bald spot.) Somewhere up there, George Michael is having a coronary. I can almost hear him shouting: “97, 98, 99, 100!”

Consumer Electronics Gone Haywire

The 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show has unplugged from Las Vegas, leaving TV news to look beyond trendy wearable devices to fill their tech voids. There’s no shortage of other electronics-related stories. We’re still hearing shoes dropping after Target’s hacked credit card debacle, with Neiman Marcus admitting they, too, have been breached. At least three other major retailers are rumored to be untying their wing tips to prepare for an announcement.

I decided to take a closer look at the personal relationship we have with technology, beginning at the CES and those wearable devices. Things you put on your wrist—fitness trackers, health monitors, tricked out watches—were especially popular.

Scott Stein of CNET tells us the Fitbit Force excels at counting steps, but Nike’s FuelBand SE works better as a watch. The Force retails for $130 and the FuelBand SE for $150. The Pebble Watch, on the other hand (no, really—worn on Stein’s other hand), is a “smart watch.” It also costs $150, but needs the release of new apps and features to achieve Mensa status. The next-generation Pebble Steel will supposedly accomplish that for just an additional $100.

Since I have a perfectly serviceable Seiko watch, let’s turn our attention to health monitors. These can be useful for seniors, but manufacturers are still shaking out the bugs. Some Fitbit wearers developed skin rashes due to allergies to the nickel in the band. Another device provided invalid information on some health condition. I don’t recall the details, but I remember thinking it wasn’t trivial. Those are just two reasons to have trust issues with these items.

If hackers can get into retailers’ systems and pilfer personal information from your credit cards, imagine what a determined hawker of “medical” products could do with your health monitor. That wristband that provides regular readings of your blood pressure? It will recommend a pricey salt substitute to get things under control. Once you buy it: Surprise! Surprise! The band congratulates you on miraculously getting your pressure down overnight, thus assuring repeat purchases.

The website Zensorium promises that their Tinké health monitor will help you “Find Your Zen,” but you’ll need a smartphone app to get there. Speaking of finding things using your smartphone, what may be the best new gadget for seniors is the StickRTrackR. It uses sensors ($30 each) that alert you if your keys get too far from your phone. I have no clue how you find your smartphone if you’ve lost that. Maybe you put a sensor on your own body to get an alert if you wander too far from the phone.

Another popular category was Home Monitoring Devices. Belken’s WeMo is on the simpler end. They describe it as “a family of simple, ingenious products that make life easier, simpler, better.” WeMo controls your home electronics via your smartphone. Sounds simple enough, provided one has a smartphone, which I simply don’t.

ISmart Alarm claims to have “the best smartphone-enabled home security and home control system.” It has contact sensors and motion sensors, an ICamera (for “real-time monitoring and picture notification”) and Remote Tags. The tags seem like a sophisticated version of StickRTrackR. You can use them to control the system remotely and to track children and pets. If I had one of those, I’d use it to find out where my husband had fallen asleep. It would save a lot of stair climbing.

The new consumer electronics offer everything from the proverbial sublime to the ridiculous. (Did I mention the Petbit fitness tracker for your dog or cat?) You may think I’m overreacting to worry about consumer electronics going haywire, but I’m not the only one who envisions this. (Stay with me here.)

One of the more unusual new movies is Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely introvert who is in the process of getting divorced. He falls in love with his computer’s talking operating system. It’s not just any computer; it’s artificial intelligence that responds to his psychological and emotional needs (and in Scarlett Johansson’s voice). Think Siri on steroids. Or mood enhancers. Her gives new meaning to “software.” It also serves as a cautionary tale about the consumer electronics in our lives.

Who can say where we’re headed with all these devices? One thing’s for certain: our government isn’t the only place that Big Brother lurks. We can’t stop that train, but we can figure out the best way to use it to our benefit. I suppose I’ll have to invest in a smart phone eventually, but staying dumb has its advantages. It’s like having a hearing aid that you can turn down when you want to tune out. There’s a lot to be said for disengaging and sitting back with a good book and a nice glass of wine. On that note...