A face tune up - no botox

A couple weeks ago I had my annual skin checkup. Fair skinned folks like myself are prone to skin cancer. Dad and sisters have a history of precancerous spots that required removal. I have had several zapped with liquid nitrogen, plus one basal cell spot removed. #badskingenes

Hotties cooking

Toss in the fact that I spent a great deal of time in the sun growing up - we were pool rats! Followed by several years simmering in the sun on the Atlantic swim team and then as a lifeguard. Coppertone was applied to encourage the sun to caress one's skin - not to block it. Or we put on baby oil with iodine at times - I'm not sure what that was about. Later we did start adding Zinc Oxide - a sun block on our noses.

I fried pretty much every which way. Not only at the pool - but as an equal opportunity burner - on the mountain. I burned my face so badly in college I developed orange blisters and my lips swelled up so that I...well, had lips! (my nickname has been zipper lips through the years)

After all of these years am I considered well-done now? Do I get the plastic thingy stuck in my head like a steak? Unfortunately - my skin doesn't cook evenly. What I ended up with are well-done spots. Age spots. Oh I pretended they were my long-lost freckles come back for a while, but there's no denying it now. Aging skin - brown and even red little clusters right on my face. How nice for me.

When I had my skin check I asked the nurse practitioner about ways to treat some of the issues I was seeing with my increasing age. I don't think of myself as a vain person - I just want to be happy with who is looking back at me in the mirror. Just like chemical assistance for my hair my skin needed a lil help. For the bestest me!

Ellen

Ellen is a Clinical Aesthetician at Koch Facial Plastic Surgery and Spa. She was just the person to talk me through this thing - very professional in explaining what would happen, how it would work and how it would feel. Ellen asked a great deal about my genetics - how well this machine works depends on the skin type one has. She said I sounded like a perfect candidate. The best thing is that I'm no longer a sun goddess! I ended up having a partial facial treatment - on a machine that's not really a laser.

It's call photorejuvenation or Intense Pulsed Light. It kinda hurts and even with little protective glasses I could see a "lightning bolt" each time she zapped me. Ellen talked me through it. It was $99. Every spot she treated turned darker immediately. Then they'll dry up and go away. She said a few of the lighter ones may need to get hit again. The left side of my face had more spots...why? From driving! Subaru - put a filter on those windows!

Ellen used to be a dental hygienist. She loves her job she told me. I could tell! Ellen says I should put sun block on my skin each day. It should have zinc in it, she said - and not just be sunscreen. Hmmm. I don't think the type I have qualifies - need to find some. If you're tanning - you might consider fake tan - it might save you some treatment on down the line!

I'll let you know if my face dries up and falls off...

Happy Mom on Mother's Day Thanks kids!

 

If you've not tried Trader Joe's chips - they're like $3 - 3 thumbs up according to Pablo



Pablo made seared scallops for my special meal - even though I'm not his mother

Lifeguard confessions (Part 2)

Marci Merrick - as seen from the high guard chair

Those work/study basket kids got an education working at Sunnyside pool that summer. The two I remember are a boy and a girl - Sharon, a skinny 15ish girl, and Rod? a boy of similar age. Both were shy, at least at first. As they got to know us they loosened up though. I don't know if the education served them well or not...

Aha - I just remember Pat Allen was another guard I forgot to mention, along with his bro Mike - both really nice guys. They were Sunnyside neighborhood kids - blue collar parents. Cindy Sheppard and Kim Waters too needed to depend on their earnings and student loans for college. Thinking back, I was still at the age when I took it all for granted how much my parents had provided for me - a college education, money for a car. I hope I wasn't too snotty about how fortunate I was.

The lifeguards were on 15 minute circuits - depending on how big the crowd was that day. There was the tall chair near the deep end of the pool, a station where a guard hovered on the side of the pool in shallow end, and another chair on the other side in the middle of the Olympic sized pool. There were 3 diving boards - a spring low board, a high dive and a medium. Even though we didn't have slides and other fancy schmancy stuff - that high dive was as thrilling a thing as I ever got myself to go on in a pool! Three meters is a long ways down!

The lifeguard chairs had microphones - which made me all powerful. It's a godlike feeling. "No Running, 3 Springs and off the board, That's it you're outta here, Break Time". Or "Pool is closed due to lightning" was a fave when we were burned out and needed a break.

The sound system carried tunes from the day that still take me back to that time.
The only radio station we could get to come in was WOW, which wasn't our fave station, but I do remember hearing some good bands like Commodores, Foreigner was new - had to go to Omaha to buy their LP, my buddy Robyn loved Thin Lizzy's "The Boys are Back in Town" because her bf was on an Henningsen Construction road crew and they traveled.

Sunnyside had a loft above the office - accessible via a wood ladder. Shag carpet and bean bag chairs were up there along with extreme heat. I spent a lot of time reading up there, sweat rolling off me.  I also made a latch hook rug that summer (remember those?).

Mark had sent me flowers to end the year...then he broke my heart..I found out later he was dating someone else too!

I was a little lovesick - I had been dating Mark, a guy from Fort Dodge who evidently decided summer was a good time to cut ties - but he didn't tell me, he just blew me off. In the pre-cell phone, email world, I sent him a couple letters that were un-requited. Perhaps all my wild partying was my way of dealing with heartbreak. Or it maybe it was just was fun to do...

Sometimes in between guarding gigs we'd sit on our towels and sun - you know with Baby Oil, frying like meat. We'd read Cosmo magazine and gossip. My dermo Ava Feldman is helping me remove evidence of that time in my life - annually frying off pre-cancerous spots.

After-hours in the loft we sometimes played a lil game called "Chugalug". Yes folks, the lifeguards were a bunch of crazy partiers. We never drank during pool hours - but at 9 p.m. - closing time, we got our party on. Heck, I learned to do a flip after a few beers. (I was too chicken without beer). And we didn't just drink at the pool - we drank all over SW Iowa - the Super Bowl, The Villa and other bars around town, Oakland, Greenbriar.

I remember driving over to Audubon on Saturday night with Kim and others to see a live band at a bar - (The band was called the Uglies from Creston with a singer named Mike Bullock. I can't remember my own kid's names sometimes but dumb stuff like this is stuck in my mind...). I don't know what we drank (did they have rufies back then?) but I ended up laying in the parking lot somehow getting pea gravel in my purse - I found it the next day. I hope I wasn't driving. Another time I helped at a swim meet - serving as a timer. After hours in the hot sun, I decided that was a good night to try gin and tonics at the Super Bowl. Five of them on an empty stomach. I still don't drink gin to this day..

There were no swimming lessons on weekends (thank goodness!), and Sunday was always a big hangover recovery day. But it was also pool cleanup day. Not always a good combo...We'd go early and float in the pool on rafts, rehydrating with water and laughing about the events of the night prior. But eventually Marci and Cindi would crack the whip. It was time to clean the changing rooms and pool deck. That's how I learned to clean toilets ya'll - you see at home we had Leona Wheatley - the cleaning lady. We'd also sprinkle stuff call HTH (it was like powdered bleach) on the bathhouse floor and on the pool deck and then hose it down, scrubbing with brooms.

Sunday nights were usually quieter - I needed to stay home sometimes! And please don't let me give you the impression all the lifeguards drank each and every night. I'm sure there were plenty of nights we didn't. I just don't remember those boring nights!

But it's no wonder my mother invited me not to come home that next summer. Who would want a crazy party animal like me around? Someone who was partying hard, only stopped at home long enough to sleep, eat stuff and do laundry. So even though most of the rest of the gang went back to the pool, the summer after my sophomore year I got to go to Grand Junction, Colorado to take a couple summer credits at Mesa Junior College and hanging with big sissies Susi (who lived there) and Cindy (who lives in Vail). It was much lonelier (I lived in the dorm by myself for a month), and less alcoholic, but  I grew up a bunch. And when I got back in early August I was still able to sub at the pool a bit before heading back to ISU.

You know they say, what goes around comes around. Our daughter Amy was a lifeguard the summer after her senior year in high school and the next summer. Her stories are just starting to trickle out. We were relieved when she stayed in Ames after that. You were right Mom.

Confessions of a former lifeguard

Creston built a new pool some 15 or so years ago - despite the modern look the noises are the same as my lifeguarding years

On my walk route today I ambled (but on a quick pace Deb, I swear) by Creston's public pool. Certain things in life take me back to my lifeguarding days. Songs of the day, pool noises, the way the sun sometimes shines on my face at a particular angle...I can't explain it - but that too takes me back.

What can I say - it's the best possible job a kid can have. And I had it that summer after my freshman year of college - the summer of 1977. It's a great job especially when you're working for the Merrick girls - Cindi and Marci (perhaps one of the nicest peeps you'll ever know) and with the rest of a great cast of characters, some of my best buddies. Sally Rodgers (of course was my longtime friend and college roomie, gorgeous but anaware, dorkily funny, smart and loyal). But others became good friends - Kim Waters (who became my sidekick homegirl that summer), Cindy Hmmm last name is escaping me? lived near Lally's. Thank you Ted - who filled in the blank. Cindy Sheppard (another very nice kid I got to know & corrupt that summer), Nellie Juhl (our resident hippy), Cathy Hjortshoj (so funny and cool) and Julia Hoilien (I recently blogged about how much I admire this chick) worked the treat stand with her mom. Candice Drake filled in as a sub. I know I'm forgetting people. Todd Pellett was one guy - I'm sure there were others. Ted Simpson taught swimming lessons.

It was a pretty vigorous schedule - at least during swimming lesson season. I'd go to the pool at 8 or 9 in the morning and be there through 9 at night. But what else did I have to do? I got one day off a week. I'm sure my mother appreciated having me out of the house. In fact she invited me not to come home after the summer after my freshman year. That fun for ya Mom?

A typical day: I would arrive at the pool in my 1977 Red Chevy Monza hatchback - just prior to 8 or 9 a.m. For four weeks in the summer the Red Cross hosted swimming lessons. For the first two weeks "city" kids attended. Their moms would drop them off - some sticking around to watch little junior swim. Other kids rode their bikes to lessons. Often Fantastic Faye - a local figure would hang out outside the fence on his own bike "Silver".

During the next two weeks, it was the "country" kids turn - delivered from places likes Cumberland and Anita in big yellow school buses. Skinny and chubby lilly white kids with plastic bags containing their towels, some with pink nose plugs. Shivering in the cold morning air - in the unheated pool.

I earned every penny of my ($2.25/hr?) teaching under the tutelage of Grand Puba Nancy Pellett, who was following in the footsteps of Betty Lou Pellett. Mom had once taught lessons with Betty Lou, so I was a pool rat from way back.

This was before Red Cross came up with fancy names for swimmer levels. We had Beginner, Advanced Beginner, Intermediate and Swimmer. Of course there were a gazillion beginners - to graduate they had to front float and back float. Some kids are just sinkers and ya gotta feel bad for them. But this is one time when a chunky kid can shine when they float like a cork! We did have "aids" (14 year old helpers) to assist instructors, but darn it sometimes I had to get into that frigid water to instruct. (I bet those parents watching were thinking - "about time!" I know that now that I have viewed similar situations as a parent). All in all - I learned a lot as a swim instructor. Like I knew I didn't want to be a teacher!

After wearing myself out instructing for 3 to 4 hours, I usually had an hour break before I needed to begin guarding lives. Sometimes I got a takeout sannie from pizza hut. Why did they do away with their hoagies with Italian dressing, man they were good! If I didn't go there, Lally's next door or the former A&W - now called Town and Country Drive In. Mona Jones worked there - she'd whip me up a patented Dr. Pepper float with fries. If all else failed, I went home - "Hi mom I'm here to make mess and eat your food."

At one the pool opened for biz. The kids came streaming in. We were daycare for many of them - a pool pass is a cheap alternative to a sitter. Little guys - Dusty and Ricky are two names that come to mind - would arrive in just their trunks with a towel. They were to entertain themselves all day at that pool.

Each pin was numbered

Work/study staff, low income high school kids, helped man the office, checking passes, taking money and dealing with baskets. What baskets you ask? Sunnyside Pool (what a cheery name) didn't have lockers, we had baskets and changing rooms. Each basket had a corresponding pin - a sturdy looking thing that could be quite a weapon if need be!

This blog is getting a bit long (I'm a windy old broad), so I'll start a Part 2 later. We're (meaning Paul, due to my unfortunate shoulder problem) painting the kitchen this weekend and I've got errands to run. And despite the poker-like pain (I know I'm milking it) I plan to clean everything from the top of the kitchen cupboards that just didn't look that dirty until we got it down. I have an appointment to see a surgeon on the 24th since therapy doesn't seem to be helping. Dang it's hell to grow old. It's likely an old lifeguarding injury - blew my whistle once too often or something...