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Archive for the ‘Growing Old’ Category

How is Your Muffin Top?

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2011

“Muffin top” is a fairly new word in the lexicon of things wrong with a woman’s body and a fairly new concept in what needs to be worked on and “fixed”.  A new word/phrase coined by those who are in the business of making money by increasing women’s consciousness of some part of the anatomy which  is declared defective, ugly and which needs to be made perfect.  We  should hate our muffin tops – they are caused by fat and they and/or their company has the way to make it go away for a substantial amount of money.

One never knows what the conversation will be at breakfast in any of our homes.  This morning’s choice of “muffin tops” at first seemed frivolous to me, but as it went on I realized this was something becoming very important to many women and men.  I would be on the verge of uncovering a bit of knowledge new to me that I could add to my health and beauty routine.   The conversation started in that direction because the youngest woman at the table was fretting over her ‘muffin top’.

The response to her fretting was the information that muffin tops come as you age and your frame shrinks.  The extra skin goes someplace and neither exercise nor cosmetics is going to get rid of it.  Dieting may make it thinner with less fat under the skin, but it will not make it go away and neither will exercise – unless someone out there knows how to eat and/or exercise to shrink skin.

Women of past generations wore girdles – even thin women.  Because this current generation has mostly lost touch with their mothers and grandmother’s, who they consider not as wise nor knowledgeable as their peers, they have lost touch with why women of past generations wore girdles.  Those older generations had to do something to make their garments look smooth and to hide that skin flap – which we now call muffin tops. The old becomes new again.  If only we could go back to having conversations with our relatives who are of an older generation we would be so wise!  You either know history or you are doomed to repeat it – someone actually said that in some history book!!

It became urgent in the discussion to explore muffin tops, because women and girls are now wearing jeans which sit on the hip – right under and emphasizing the muffin top.  Is it because emphasizing such a “problem” area can increase the money spent by women to hide it – eliminate it -mutilate it?  Not even plastic surgeons can rid you of your muffin tops.  You can get a scar around your body to cut out the extra skin, but it won’t last because as your frame continues to shrink your muffin top will return.

What to do?  No one had an answer.  One woman wore control top panty hose because that was the least intrusive way to keep her outer garments smooth.  Another wore a girdle because she wanted to make sure she had everything hidden.  The young woman, who started the conversation with an almost passing comment about feeling uncomfortable with her ‘muffin top’ showing, was the youngest woman around the table.  She was also the only woman around the table who wore those hip hugging jeans.  Aren’t they what started the movement in ghetto’s across the U. S. among African American young boys wearing pants which bag and hang down almost and sometimes definitely below the crack in …………?  Is that where designers’ got their inspiration for those hip hugging jeans?  Is that the direction in which those hip huggers for women are going?

She wore those instead of the jeans which went to her natural waistline – which is what she used to wear – because the advertisements are all equating those who wear those waist-high jeans as wearing ‘grandmother’ jeans and she didn’t want to look old.  (She was probably about 30 years old).  No one had any sympathy for her.  Everyone told her to get rid of those hip huggers and wear normal clothes for normal body shapes and she wouldn’t have to worry about a muffin top since ‘normal’ or ‘grandmother’ jeans hide your muffin top and give you a much nicer, softer shape.  Somehow, I don’t think she was listening – she was looking, instead at the picture of Jane Fonda in pants which are tightly fitted around the legs.  Since she looked as though she had short legs I wonder where trying to wear those tight-legged jeans will lead her?  Sleeping in a leg stretcher?

The woman at the table who impressed was the one who picked up our blog about liquid vitamin C.  She was using every kind of lotion on her thighs and her body from the waist down to get rid of the rapidly increasing look of fat breaking up under the skin – not wrinkles exactly, but a not so great look which only promised to worsen as time went on.  She waxed eloquent about liquid vitamin C.  It took a little while of constant use, which for her was every other day with a liquid Vitamin C overall massage after her shower, but the results were startling.

She did tell us the first two times she used the liquid C she had a bit of a problem with ‘peeing” – her word, not ours – but she just adjusted her water intake – drank a lot more water during the day – and by the third liquid Vitamin C massage she was fine.  She did not offer to show us the results, we had to take her word for the fact that the skin from her waistline down to her knees had dramatically improved – smoothed out and she was now happy about wearing shorts.  She could even look good wearing a swim suit without parts of her body being reminiscent of having cottage cheese under the skin.  That was important to her because she spent the winters in resort areas where looking good in a swim suit was important.

She put a little of her liquid Vitamin C in our saucers and we all tried it.  I must say the results of just one trial were impressive.  The liquid Vitamin C became sticky after a while so we had to rinse it off – one woman asked for olive oil and put the olive oil on her face after she had the liquid C on for several minutes.  She had a grand facial massage tapping all around her face for quite some time – until someone else got a bit irritated at having to watch and she left the table.  When she came back, her face looked fabulous.  She had rinsed off the liquid Vitamin C and olive oil with cold water and just patted her skin dry.  So very quietly I resolved to make that a bi-weekly regimen.

We went on to note that Dr Oz has finally caught up to Bettina Network’s blog.  One of his recent shows talked about not using soap – ever.  I went back and searched the blog and found we had talked about that months and months ago.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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My Feet and Liquid Vitamin C

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2011

Please copyright this under my name and the Bettina Network’s name.  I don’t know why – it just strikes me as the thing to do for this blog.

I discovered Liquid Vitamin C a couple years ago and was excited to read your blog on using Liquid Vitamin C as a cosmetic.  It works beautifully.

My discovery was with my feet.  As I grow older, my feet grow uglier and have a tendency to puff up if I sit too long.  By accident almost, I massaged my feet with liquid vitamin C and put white socks on over the C.  I left them on and forgot what I had done, going about my daily life.

Imagine my surprise when I went to bed, took off my socks and found beautiful feet.  It was such a freeing feeling.  I felt great all day, but that was the real treat at the end of the day.

Since then I make it a part of my health regimen to massage my feet with Liquid Vitamin C after every bath and if I skip a day and don’t take a bath I still wash my feet, give them a liquid Vitamin C massage and put them in white cotton socks.  What a difference a small thing like that makes.  My first shock at seeing my feet come out of the white socks the first time I tried this was nothing compared to how much more beautiful my feet have become since I started doing this on a regular basis.  I could have had plastic surgery on my feet, which I was considering seriously because they looked so awful, but now I don’t have to do that.  It took quite a few months to achieve this result, but constancy gave me a good result.  If I had plastic surgery the recovery time would have been much longer – given the pain, inconvenience, adjustment and inability to walk for quite some time.  This way, I have beautiful feet and this whole process made me feel a lot better given the influence of the liquid C into my body on a daily basis coming from my feet.

Hope my experience benefits someone else.

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Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

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A Tribute to Mary Daly

Friday, January 8th, 2010

by: Marceline Donaldson

A friend of mine died on Sunday. The world is changing much too fast. Old friends are leaving, quietly. You hear nothing for a couple years and then the news comes that they have died. Keep your friends and family close. Before you know it, they will be gone. 

 
Mary Daly died on Sunday. I first met Mary when I was at Harvard Business School. On a Sunday, I went to Memorial Church. No particular reason, that was what I did on Sundays. The preacher was Mary Daly. She preached a sermon I will never forget and at the end of it led a walk out to protest the patriarchy. – Almost everybody in Harvard Memorial Church that Sunday, walked out with her – me included. It was kind of like being in a shocked, unreal, dreamlike place. It was 1971 and the world was just waking up to what feminism and the women’s movement was all about. 
 
I saw the picture of Mary Daly that the Boston Globe used over her obituary. It was probably the worst picture of her they could find. Choosing that picture said more about the Boston Globe than it did about Mary Daly. When I met Mary that Sunday, so many years ago, she was a young, very beautiful woman. I read Mary’s obituary in the Boston Globe. It said nothing about the Memorial Church walkout. It read as though what she did in life was to refuse to admit men to her classes at Boston College. 
 
I spent the 1970’s protesting, reading Mary’s books, along with many more and waking up from my southern, feminine, shy self. I turned the ‘ne at the end of feminine into ‘st and have been doing my little bit to change a patriarchy that sometimes seems intransigent. Those who fought as hard as Mary Daly did, suffer the slings and arrows; the harsh judgments of their peers; the jealousy of those fighting alongside them; the rage of the patriarchy and more, but they have the freedom, the total internal freedom that comes with knowing who you are, of defining yourself; of not allowing this world and its institutional structures to dictate your sense of self-worth. That freedom is worth all the pain and agony which goes along with claiming it. 
 
To Mary Daly – my deepest thanks for the incredible way you gave of yourself to bring about change from a baser way of living in this world to one in which me, my children and grandchildren can begin to heal from the burdens and abuses of the patriarchal system into which we were born. 
 
Out of the depths of my despair, my frustration, my confusion, my feelings of being an alien where I live every day, breaks forth my realization of the incredible joy of being me – of understanding who that is – of not compromising my equality for anything or anyone – of becoming fierce and strong and proud of my femaleness. Stereotypes fall away, they lose their grip and I see through all the games being played against me. Games to diminish me; to bind me; to keep me from being all that i was born to be, all that my talents push me to be – how glorious is that freedom. May it keep its hold on me forever. 
 
Amazingly, many of the things Mary Daly talked about I heard from my grandmother. She didn’t phrase them the same way and my grandmother would be appalled if anyone called her a feminist, but there she was. She talked about sin – if you are going to sin, sin boldly, she said. Always make your own living. You are a free, whole person – always remember that. There is nothing you can’t do. If one door closes, another door opens – only you have to be able to see the opening door and if you are crying over the door that closed in your face, you will surely miss the better one opening just a few feet away – and it isn’t going to sit there open for long, waiting until you arise from your self-pity, missy. 
 
The world will miss a beautiful soul. God bless you Mary Daly. May your soul and the souls of the departed do glorious things together and be joyous in your new life in ways that were not possible on earth.
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Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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Who is that woman on the Harley?

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

copyright 2009 The Bettina Network, inc.

Marceline Donaldson
It’s my GRANDMOTHER?
At age 15 I took my first and, until now, last ride on a motorcycle after Church one Sunday when a friend offered me a ride on his Harley.  My grandmother heard about it before I returned from a ride around the block and that was the end of my motorcycle career.
She must have put a great fear in me because I didn’t even think of riding a motorcycle until recently when we had two guests – a mother and daughter – who are great Harley fans and ride frequently.  So, of course, I have to try this – my grandmother died twenty years ago.  More later as my experience grows!!!!!
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Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Toss Viagra, Try Zinc

Friday, July 11th, 2008

copyright 2008 The Bettina Network, inc.

We had a very exciting breakfast – some would think it was x-rated, but it was a family-friendly discussion.

Apparently, the power of zinc is beginning to circulate. I thought we knew all there was to know about nutrition, vitamins, etc. but this bit of knowing was new to us. It can be a bit disconcerting when you realize you don’t know it all!!!

A couple people at the breakfast table talked about how they discovered, in the process of taking zinc lozenges to get rid of a cold, or to dampen its horrid impact on the body, that they had interesting side affects. Not realizing exactly what caused those side affects, they experimented with several things they had been eating and much to their surprise it was the zinc lozenges. At this point, the breakfast table broke up into peals of laughter.

Much to our surprise, a quiet voice, from a woman at the end of the table verified that she also had the same experience and having tried it over and over again, the results were always predictable. She decided to take away her husbands viagra and substitute zinc. She did and he didn’t notice the difference.

Could this be a great new scientific breakthrough? Or has this been known for hundreds of years only to be hidden from this current generation! Have we discovered something new or did our table talk rediscover what was generally known before we became so alienated from one another?

I hope this knowledge doesn’t result in zinc being taken off the market the way the effectiveness of almonds was destroyed through that pasteurization process.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

 

 

Keeping Hair Healthy

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

copyright 2008 Bettina Network, Inc.

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As you grow old you will notice your hair gets drier and it becomes “fly away” hair.  If your hair was naturally curly, it now no longer holds a curl for more then a day.
TO BEGIN:
Wash your hair and let it dry.  (That’s simple enough).
You need two or three organic eggs for this treatment – depending on the length of your hair.
Crack open the eggs put them in a small bowl and whip with a fork – not a lot, just a little as though you were going to make scrambled eggs.  Part your hair with a comb and with your fingers scoop up the raw egg and rub it into your scalp, right in the part.  Continue parting your hair – at small intervals of no more than 1/2 inch and repeat the process of scooping up the raw egg and rubbing it into the new part.
When you have finished rubbing the raw eggs into your scalp, take what is left over and put it on the rest of your hair.  Scoop the hair up onto your head and make sure it is totally covered and wet with the raw egg.
Massage your hair and scalp for a minute or two.  You will find the eggs act like soap and will foam a little bit.  That’s good!!  Just think of all the good omega-3, protein and other good nutrients  going into your scalp.
Put a shower cap over your hair and let the eggs soak into your hair and scalp for about 1/2 hour.
With the little egg left over in the bowl, give yourself a facial.  Gently rub the raw egg all over your face. I use it on my eye lids and also under my eyes.  Lie down for the 1/2 hour you need for this face and scalp egg treatment to work, with your feet up.
This egg facial is also a nice change from the Vitamin A and dry milk facial we outlined for you in another one of these articles.
Did you know that whatever you put on your skin or scalp shows up in your blood stream almost immediately?  So don’t complicate things, use organic eggs laid by hens that run around in the sun all day, otherwise, don’t bother.  We think it is a waste of time and resources.  Just stop a minute and think of what’s in your blood stream when you dye your hair or use those ingredients you can neither spell nor pronounce.
Rinse the eggs out of your hair and off your face after 1/2 hour.  DO NOT WASH YOUR HAIR, ONLY RINSE OUT THE EGGS. You might increase this beauty treatment for your hair by clipping a vitamin E capsule and putting it on your hair for a little oil to be absorbed.
This is best done twice a week – if you are over 80 years old.
Once a week if you are over 70 years old
Every other week if you are 70 or younger.
In a few months you should see great results.  The baby hair that used to be around my face is beginning to grow back since I started this regimen.
When you start getting great results, do write and let us know.  Testimonials are always good for those doubting Thomasinas among us.
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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

 

 

Getting Old

Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Coppyright 2008 by Marceline Donaldson

Growing old is an amazing process.  Especially when you live in a society which worships youth. It seems as though every kind of media output is focused on being young, staying young, looking young, feeling young.  There is very little in our society to help you get through this last stage from life to death.  It is even considered morbid to broach the question or to discuss anything about that process unless, of course, you are dying from some terminal disease within months and your story makes good copy.  Even AARP is marketing/insurance oriented and doesn’t really help.  You have to wade through all of those ads and some inane stories to get any kind of information and at that point the information isn’t worth the time and effort it took to find it.

We are starting another line on Bettina’s Blog about old age. It is really something to celebrate. Look at me, I am still here, still surviving, fairly healthy and I have the wisdom of the experiences I have accumulated over all those years to remember and fall back on in any set of circumstances.  I can make decisions quicker because of my years of experience; I can understand other people better because I’ve seen and experienced so many different kinds of people and I have seen them in so many different stages of development; and I am not so self-absorbed, because the years of living tears you away from yourself if you’ve been even a little bit open to the world.  My friends are much more open now then they were in their 20’s, 30’s etc.  What’s the point of keeping secrets or putting on a front for the world!  With gray hair, sagging stomach and “laugh” lines comes a slightly different set of values and a “why bother” attitude.  Some things which were important just aren’t anymore.
One thing I’ve found lately – time changes.  That is the most profound change and that is when you know “old age” has set in.  When a month has passed and you feel as though its only been a week,  you know something in your life has changed dramatically.  Talking around the breakfast table, I discovered that is a common problem.  It is a problem because you have to take on a new discipline on the administrative side of life.  All of a sudden your bills aren’t getting paid as promptly as they used to be paid because it doesn’t seem as though a month has passed.
Once through that surprising difficulty, life smooths out again because that new discipline you’ve had to take on with the paperwork side of life helps the rest.
A second bonus is – once you are several years pass menopause your tendency to gain weight at such a feverish pitch slows down.  We had one very lively breakfast conversation about dieting to lose weight and I realized dieting is a consumer boon doggle for the marketing people.  I sort of knew that years before, but on an intellectual level because I was still subject to being influenced by the way that marketing boon doggle was being used by the “thin sellers”.  Today, I have that knowing on an emotional, deep down level. Seeing this society chase after being thin makes me laugh and be sad by turn, but it doesn’t make me take a second look or give a second thought to whatever is being offered.  I must be really old.
The way to selll something these days is to pitch it as making you thinner – if you look thinner, feel thinner, think thinner – you will seriously consider buying whatever is being promoted.  If not buying it, you will look into the offer to see if it has a real hope of making you thin.
Over the long haul, it really doesn’t matter.  What is important is what you eat.  My thinnest time of life was in my mid-30′ to about 50 when my diet was vegetarian with nothing cooked. All vegies, all raw.  I didn’t have a pound of fat anyplace.    That was great.  I think I looked at myself in every window I passed to admire the image.  Now, I eat what I’ve discovered over all those years contributes to my health and energy level.  It is such a simpler lifestyle.  I would like to pass that on to my children, but aging will do that much better then I ever could.
When they were little we had this all vegie, all raw except for freshly baked bread, time in our lives and they thought I didn’t love them.  The bread only lasted a day because it was stale by day two and hard as a rock by day three so that was the stuff of many family jokes.  And everyone knows – learned from daytime television – a mother’s love is judged by the meals she cooks.  The heavier, the more elaborate, the bordering on stroke and heart attack meals she cooked, the more love she was considered to have for her family.  It took enormous amounts of time to figure out how to keep my girls eating well, what combinations were healthy, how to find all of this raw food before the “organic” revolution.
That kind of effort was totally outside of the normal, middle class American psyche of what constituted a loving mother.  Today, I look back on all the pain and grief those ideas about food caused all of us and just have to shake my head.  Who was that woman!
Currently, the most amazing times for me are those class reunion times.  I have gone to a few reunions and I can’t believe how old my classmates have become.  I look in the mirror and see myself daily, but somehow, that gradual aging is totally acceptable to me.  To see someone I haven’t seen for five years is dramatic.  They looked fairly young until the last two five year reunion cycles.  Some have died, some can hardly walk and their young relatives come with them to make sure they don’t get into trouble negotiating back and forth from their rooms to the reunion events and some are just lost.  The lost are the saddest of all.  They are going over their lives and regretting much of what they could have and didn’t do.  It is an amazing grieving process and I know they will die soon.  The look of fear in their eyes never leaves and the fun, joking person you once knew has already left this earth.
Most dramatic among the reunion crowd is to see the value change. Listening to the political speeches and ads and hoop-la, it seems as though the biggest mistake a candidate can make, which then makes that person grist for the mill to be ground into little pieces and thrown to the dogs (the media), is to change their minds.  To have a change of heart; change of decision from a few years ago; change of any kind is portrayed by the media as almost on a par with major venal sin.  They will viciously stalk a candidate to be the first to declare – you didn’t believe that two years ago!  You have changed your mind and your position you are not to be trusted.
The most beautiful thing I see at my reunions and among my former classmates from several institutions (I did get around), is to hear them talk about the changes in their lives – their value changes – how they were strong in one belief, but have now changed because of some set of circumstances and/or experiences they’ve been through which made them see things in a different light.  More then any other marker on this road from birth to death, the one which shows strongest that you are aging is that change in values, in beliefs, in how you perceive things.  From that comes a deep discernment which youth is denied.
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