Why else would I have cut off my hair, gone Pole Dancing and and taken a trapeze class all in the last month? Yep, that’s me on the trapeze…though not me (I mean , seriously) on the pole.

I think it all started with my 7th annual 39th Birthday. You know, one birthday nearer to “closer to 50 than to 40.”  One birthday closer to “invisible to men under the age of 70.” Closer to a serious debate on whether or not to get Botox. Closer, let’s face it, to the complete demise of my face. Is it just me, or is it true that every year, the day after your birthday, you develop a new physical flaw?  The day after my fortieth, I noticed my first age spot. The day after my forty-first: two little creases between my brows.  Forty second? Wrinkly knees.

Hair cut?  It’s a wonder I didn’t shave my head like Brittany Spears.

My mid-life crisis management began simply enough, I had a (free) facial at the Dermalogica store in Soho. (Which I wrote about already. Read it here.)

My next plan was to distract myself.  So I had a party.  Or – to be more exact, Nintendo had a party that just happened to be at my house. (Full disclosure: Nintendo sponsored the party, paid for the food, the party favors, and demo-ed the Wii’s internet capabilities and relationship with Netflix.) Mind you, it wasn’t a birthday party, which only serves to remind you that you’ve aged.  It was a Wii party.  Though that comes with it’s own set of problems.

See, while in life I think of myself as relatively coordinated (as long as balls, bats, and nets are not involved), in Wii world, I have bad balance, no hand eye coordination, and would never, ever have been issued a driver’s license.  My kids, on the other hand, (who will not be issued driver’s licenses for another seven years,) cruise along the Wii highway with ease.  This makes me think that were  I younger, I would just pick up a Wii remote and win the Indy 500. My Wii incompetence is indicative of my advanced age.

But the Nintendo people knew their audience.  For the kids, they downloaded a game onto the Wii  that seemed to me to be more complicated than Health Care Reform, but that my kids instantly picked up. For the adults, they downloaded a Quiz Show type game that required  virtually NO Wii skills whatsoever!  I even won.

I felt younger already.

Still — that birthday was looming, and I needed something more drastic than cutting off my hair or treating my enlarged pores.  So I went pole dancing with a friend at  Sheila Kelley’s S Factor, because. let’s face it, nothing says sexy like a 45 year old woman swinging from a pole.

How did this happen? I’ve joined this new site called Groupon which, once a day, emails me a group coupon for something in NY (FYI: they may have the service for your city, too.). Sometimes it’s restaurants, or spas, or flowers.  But this time, it was pole dancing, and with the same “I don’t know what I was thinking” spirit in which I posed for….art photos as a gift to my husband for our tenth anniversary, I signed up.

Sheila Kelley’s S Studio in NY (they are all over the country! Go Figure!) is all about women.  Empowering women, making them feel safe and in control of their bodies and their sexuality. They take all this very seriously.  But while trying to follow my incredibly perfect-bodied instructor Barbara’s instructions to touch my “body and discover something new about it,” I found it hard not to giggle.

My body has been around for 45 years.  With the possible exception of my stomach – which has been off limits to all human contact since 1977, I’d say it’s all been discovered.  Still, I was there, so I “explored” myself.  Though, something tells me I wasn’t supposed to discover (or pay attention to) the newly acquired fleshy inner-tube around my middle, or the sudden crepe-i-ness of my arms. I was still exploring, even if I was tempted to abandon ship and mutiny against Captain Age-a-lot.

There was more to it than just self-loving in public. Pole Dancing, evidently, is an art. You have to warm up. You have to learn a particular walk. (I almost fell over — but that’s just me.) You have to writhe just so. You have to stick out your butt.  A lot. And most important: you have to be able to STOP giggling.

I did.  Mostly.  I strutted and walked and gyrated with the other mom-aged women in the class.  I did the very loosely choreographed free dance, which included rubbing myself up against a wall and then sliding down it, crawling across the floor, and standing up – butt first – from a squat position. I even learned my first pole trick: The Firefly.  But I can’t tell you what it is, because Sheila Kelley Students have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Suffice it to say that the best thing about  Pole Dancing ( I don’t know why I feel like it should be capitalized.  It just seems THAT big!) was that I got to do it in a room with no mirrors (all the studios are mirror free) so I can let myself believe I didn’t look ridiculous doing it.

Had I been able to see myself, I no doubt would have run from the room in horror.  But as it was, I felt the teeniest bit sexy, swung on the pole, and had fun. (Though the bruises on my legs lasted a week.) Would I sign up for more?  Barbara gave the sales pitch after class: if we signed up for the series we’d learn more tricks! We’d feel sexier!  We’d hang upside down from the pole!  We’d learn lap-dancing!  That was it for me — you have to LEARN how to lap dance? I needed another adventure.

Trapeze.

But to read about that, (and see more pictures) you’ll have to come back tomorrow for part 2.

Check out this video

These guys are not kidding around. But it isn’t about being buff. It’s about learning to focus, about taking control of your health and your life. These guys talk at prisons and at schools. They are all about keeping kids off the streets and into fitness and their bodies.

It was also the warmest, friendliest group of guys: there with their wives and kids. They invited us to join them on their summer picnics, exchanged emails. And by the end of the afternoon, our kids were best friends.

They don’t have a show– they just do what they do. And what they do is amazing.
Get out of your comfort zone and head up to 121st St and Madison Ave. in Harlem. And Hang.

Yikes.

First, my daughter asked why the girls looked in the mirror and said bad things about themselves. Then she asked what a “bee-yotch” was.  Then she asked what a condom was. I told her.

“It something men put on their penises so that their ingredients won’t mix with a woman’s ingredients when they have sex, and they won’t get a baby.”

“Well then,” she said “what’s the point?  If you’re not gonna have a baby why do it?”

My daughter may be innocent now, but she won’t stay that way.  That’s why I think it’s important for NYC Public schools to have sex ed.  If you do, too, click here to read the rest of this post on NYC Moms blog, and learn how you can help.

Why?

Oh — I don’t know.  Maybe it’s the VIRULENT stomach flu coursing through my entire family.

Even the dog threw up.  Seriously.

First it was my son.  On vacation. In Florida.  Perfect weather.  Beautiful Gulf of Mexico waters.  We stayed inside for almost the entire time.  He was being sick to his stomach.  I was expanding mine.

I mean, really, what else was there to do stuck in a condo with a sick kid while my husband and other kid went out to the beach and the pool and on a bike ride? Eat!!! (And no, I don’t blame hubby.  Sick kids (at least mine) want their Mommy when they’re sick.)

Then we got home.  Two weeks of family togetherness…finally coming to an end!

That’s when my daughter got the stomach flu.  Then my husband. (the worst patient of all….but let’s not go there, shall we?)

We’re going on three weeks of someone in my family being sick to his or her stomach.

In other words, three weeks of me spending WAY too much time at home near the refrigerator, the pantry, the stash of Halloween Candy that never got eaten.  Seriously.

All that Swine Flu and Pneumonia for nothing!!!  At least after that I was thin. And I kept off half of it until this round of illness.

Now what I want to know is…where’s the colon cleansing stomach bug when I need it?  Where’s the quick route to weight loss that I crave?  Nope, it’s back to counting points and weighing portions.

Ugh.

Happy Spring and summer is just around the corner and I’m gonna have to put on a bathing suit everybody!

Huh?

I’m exercising, buddy. I’m wearing an old Alvin Ailey T-shirt, I have no make-up on, I’m sweating, I’m barefoot, I’m worried that since I’ve done nothing aerobic in two months that my pneumonia compromised lungs will collapse… and you want me to feel sexy?

I don’t feel sexy.  I don’t even want to think sexy.  All I want to think about is what I’m gonna eat when this is over.

To make things worse, he kept on using the idea of a puppy as an image. As in “scoop your arms as if you were picking up a puppy.”

Picking up, scoop and puppy. What do those two words make me think of?

You guessed it, picking up my puppy’s poop. In the living room. In my son’s bedroom. Everywhere, it seems, but outside.

So between the sexy talk and the puppy I did NOT feel empowered and invigorated. I felt sweaty and decidedly unsexy. And I kept on smelling poop.  Please, please, let the puppy not have pooped on something I’m wearing.

Ah well, enough complaining.  Time to go walk the dog.

A time to go out and celebrate.  And eat.

A time to have more excuses to stuff your face than any other time of the year.  (With the possible exception of birthdays.  After forty, the only way through a birthday is with spoon in one hand, ice cream in the other.)

This holiday season, however, I am offering you an out: A free copy of Wii Fit Plus.

In my never ending quest to be – if not thin – then at least thinner than I have been most of my adult life, I have tried it all.  Starting back in High School when I went on The Woman Doctor’s Diet for  Teenaged Girls (which involved eating nothing but oranges and hamburgers for a week. Really) to the low-fat hi-carb/lo-carb-high fat crazes, to relatively sane diets like  Weight Watchers, or simply shutting my mouth every once in a while. (I’m writing a book about that one, it’s going to be called: The Get up off your Lazy Ass and Stop Stuffing your Face Diet.)

But the bottom line for me, a woman who has weighed more or less the same (within 5 pounds – other than pregnancy) for more than twenty-five years, is that I need to exercise to change my body. (or get Swine Flu. Neither a very tempting option.)

I have more excuses for NOT going to the gym than reasons to go there.  I don’t have time.  I have a headache.  I have to cook dinner/go shopping/write a post/pull out my toenails with a tweezer.  Basically, ANYTHING but exercise.  But then this new crop of exercise games for the Wii showed up.  The Wii Fit basically ruined any chance I had of ever having a believable, justifiable excuse not to exercise.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it (like, say, those of you who never read, watch tv, listen to the radio, or are anywhere within 100 feet of a child) the Wii Fit was Nintendo’s genius idea to make the already pretty good for exercising Wii into a true exercise machine.  The Wii Fit tracks your exercise success by letting you set weight loss and BMI goals, and then letting you know who you’re doing.  You get an avatar trainer. and then follow along with the Mii’s as you do a series of balance, strenght, or aerobic exercises.  It’s fun, and it works. (Not that it’s the greatest workout ever, but it sure beats sitting at home and typing on a computer, which is what I’m doing right now. Yeah.)

The Wii Fit Plus, the latest incarnation of their already enormously successful game, takes it all one step farther.  Now you get to choose your workout, personalize it, set how much time you want to spend, pick a pre-set routine, or make up your own.  There’s a locker room, and more choices, more ways to personalize.

I’d do it more myself, but I have to cook dinner/go shopping/write a post/give away my copy. (full disclosure: it’s one of two free copies that Nintendo sent me.  One for review, one to give away.  And I’m giving it.)

So, do you want to get in shape without having to leave your home?  Or, if it doesn’t really get you in shape, do you want to at least not turn into a total slug in this, the how much can you eat in one six week period holiday season?

Leave a comment below, telling me what holiday indulgence is your worst, and I’ll enter you to win a brand-spanking new copy of Wii Fit Plus. (please note: you need to own a Wii Fit Balance Board to use this game.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Winner will be chosen by random.org on Sunday, December 13th at 9pm. Contest open to US residents 18 and older.

Want more chances to win?  Link back to this post on your own website, and I’ll enter you again every time someone links over. Tweet this contest, and include the hashtag #hip2housewife giveaway, and I’ll enter you yet again.

Hey, everyone could use a little flab insurance over the holidays.  Why not you?

I wrote a piece about the Upside of Having Swine Flu for NYC Moms before I knew I have Pneumonia.  Suddenly, the upside is harder to see.

But you can read all about it, by clicking right here.

She was funny, charming, and so incredibly rrrrrripped  — you could bounce a ten pound weight off her abdomen.

You can read all about my visit with her here.

Plus, right here on this site, you can enter to win Jillian’s very own Quick Start Rapid Weight Loss System, plus a free week of weight loss tips and support from JillianWeightloss.com.

Jillian’s Quick Start system contains two bottles of her special formulations: Maximum Strenght Calorie Control™, and Maximum Strength Fat Burner™.  She swears that taking four capsules a day will jump start your weight loss and make it easier to meet your weight loss goals.

Wanna win? (or should that be lose?)

Leave a comment below telling me what you love about Jillian, and what you DON”T love about dieting, and I’ll pick a winner at random using random.org.

Now for the Fine Print:

Contest open to US residents only.  Must be 18 or older to enter. Don’t forget to leave your email address (no one will see it but me.) Contests ends 9pm, Friday, October 9th.

Good luck!

*****

Nothing says you’re getting older more than the phone calls.  Last year, it seemed that every time I picked up the phone it was either someone telling me they were getting divorced, or that they had cancer.  I don’t mean to sound flip.  The first is the end of life as you know it, and the second the potential end of life all together.  But if you can’t find humor in it all, you can’t survive it.  There are even websites devoted to “Cancer Jokes.”  Gotta love the internet.

Still, it’s hard to find anything to smile about when you’re watching someone suffer. Still, I try.  Humor is how I cope with everything from whining kids, to leaky roofs, to sagging bustlines.  So when my mother-in-law was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma this summer, we joked about how chemo would be the best diet ever.  When my college boyfriend found out that his thyroid cancer had metastasized into his lungs, he quipped “Bet now you’re really glad you didn’t marry me!”  And when my own mother went in for her second mastectomy, after already having lost her large intestine to colitis twenty years earlier, we joked that it was “another year, another body part.”

Not truly funny, maybe.  But when you’re terrified, or sad, or desperate, sometimes you’ll laugh, just to make it seem like it’s not that bad. Sometimes you’ll laugh just so you won’t cry.

So here’s my little list of the “bright side” to cancer.  (Fair warning: Cancer jokes are certainly not for everyone.  Some of you may be offended.  But for those of you need to laugh to make it through….read on.)

1. Cancer is the best “out” ever.  Forget someone’s name?  Oh, it’s the chemo-brain, so sorry.  Don’t want to go out to dinner with your boring neighbor? “I’m just so tired.  The cancer, you know.”  Having a bad hair day?  ‘nough said.

2. Illness one-ups-manship.  Cancer trumps all.  Tired of hearing your friend complain about how exhausted she is? Pull the cancer card.  That’ll shut her right up.

3. Cancer is an excuse to go blond.  Or brunette.  Or redheaded.  Or long and curly.  Or short and sassy.  Change your wig as fast as you change your mind.  You’re allowed!

4. Cancer reminds you of how many people love you.  Not a funny one, but a truth.  So many people will call you and offer help.  So many friends will take care of your kids, or bring over food.  Or make you laugh when you feel like crying.

And so many bloggers are part of working towards the goal of no cancer at all. So many people out there who don’t know anything about you are writing and joining the Bloggers for More Birthdays blog chain.  Because we care.  Because we want to make difference.  And because we know — because some of us have gone through it as patients, as children, as spouses, as friends — that cancer really isn’t anything to laugh at.

But imagine, just imagine, how much  we’ll all smile when we’ve conquered it.  When it’s just a memory – like polio, or rampant measles and mumps.  Think how much laughter there will be then.  No cancer jokes necessary.

What will I be doing?  Posting at least once a week.  Getting involved in the forums.  Participating in surveys. Basically being a part of an incredibly cool, potentially medically influential company that really, truly, wants to make a difference in women’s health – and in health care in general. (No pressure, but if you’re pregnant, you can contribute to some pretty cool research related to women’s gestational health by participating too. Click here.)

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to get your genome tested (and full disclosure: as an employee, I had it done for free.)  read my post, below.  And check out this video, to see what it’s like to Spit!

And now – the post:

WHY I SPAT

Genotyping. The whole thing has a kind of futuristic feeling. Like I should be wearing a silver jumpsuit and sitting in a white laminate Pod, eating simulated food, while a computer calculates the precise moment at which my offspring will appear and completely disrupt my life.

But genotyping isn’t science fiction. It’s here.

Part of me feels a little “don’t ask/don’t tell.” What if I find out something terrible? Like I have a tremendous chance of developing a particularly awful disease, or that I’m genetically related to that horrible mother at my kids’ school who’s always telling everyone what a “genius” her kid is, or that, in all likelihood, I will never, ever, be truly thin. I’m not sure I want to know.

Take, for instance, the possibility that my genes indicate that I will never be thin. Will I use it as an excuse to scarf down a pint of ice-cream with a chocolate-chip cookie chaser? Or if I am genetically related to that mother – will I feel obligated to ask her to join me for Thanksgiving dinner, thus increasing exponentially the possibility of my suffering a sever bout of indigestion? Or, in a completely unfunny scenario, what if I find out I have the breast cancer gene? Will I live in fear for the rest of my life? Will I opt to take preventative action? Who knows?

But I’ve never been one to shy away from the truth, to eschew knowledge and go through life in blissful ignorance. So I do want to know as much about myself as I can. But more than that, I want to know about how I came to be who I am.

My mother’s family consisted of her, her brother, and her parents. Every other person in her extended family was killed in World War II. My grandparents never wanted to discuss their painful past, which left me with little to no information about where that side of my family came from. Maybe genotyping could offer some sort of snap-shot of them that I don’t have, and maybe my genetic picture will help fill in the blanks in my family’s medical history.

My own family consists of me, my husband, and our two children. Like most mothers, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my kids. (At their request, I even put on a cat costume this Halloween. And trust me, a forty-three year old mother in a tight cat-suit with ears does not make anyone meow.) Maybe learning about my own genetic make-up will give me the information I need to keep my children healthy, help them grow.

I might find out things I don’t want to know. But the thought that I might find out something horrible is outweighed by the possibility that I might find out something useful. Or even that I may help someone else by contributing to research that could lead to breakthroughs in any number of medical fields. I could inform myself, know what I need to do to help me and my family live long productive life. Plus, I could and find out if it’s true what my Great Uncle Nat always said: I’m related to Harry Connick Jr. Cousin Harry!!! I love you!

If I find out, however, that I will never, ever, be truly thin. I may have to ask for a refund.