The Fabulous Geezersisters’ Weblog — Austin, Texas novelist Ruth Pennebaker, who's old enough to call herself "fabulous," writes about family, politics, marriage, friendship, feminism, aging and whatever else occurs to her. Her upcoming novel, What Did I Do to Deserve This?, will be published by Berkley in early 2011.

Thanking Your Lucky Stars

February 23, 2010

I’ve never met Mark McKinnon, the Austin political media guru. But I’ve always heard he’s a good guy — even if he did help to bring us eight years of George W. Bush.

Today, though, McKinnon moves from the political to the highly personal as he writes about the “gift” of his wife’s cancer in the Daily Beast. (I hope to God he didn’t write that headline himself.) In some ways, it’s a warm, touching story about a lucky guy who grows up and realizes the important things in life — you know, love and family — when his wife is diagnosed with a deadly form of cancer.

In too many other ways, though, it’s self-congratulatory bullshit and it made me want to scream.

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Permanently Out of Style

February 22, 2010

However, this most recent query stopped me in my low-heeled tracks. “Who,” a woman asked me recently, “is your fashion icon?”

My fashion icon? I could feel my skull crashing in, my breath growing short, my balance teetering. Just look at me, I thought, panicking. Do I look like I have a fashion icon?

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Failing at Enlightenment

February 17, 2010

When you’re diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, you realize there are two different groups of people in the world. There are the sick and the healthy.

You already know about the healthy. (After all, you are a formerly healthy person yourself!) But, the longer you are sick, the more you learn about the healthy — and it isn’t good. They are so heedless, so superficial, so carefree. Since they are so ignorant of their own good fortune in being healthy, they don’t recognize their appalling arrogance in assuming they will always be healthy.

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The Night We Sort of Saw Lauren Bacall

February 15, 2010

Months ago, when we were first came to New York, I recall whining in print (this is also known as writing) about seeing no celebrities. It’s all gotten better since then. To paraphrase Lily Tomlin in The Late Show, which you should see because it’s so damned funny, we’ve now done the whole star trip.

It started a couple of months ago at Hale & Hearty Soups. My husband, who was standing in line next to me, started rolling his eyes and twitching uncontrollably. It’s usually my role in life to do that — not his — so I knew something was up.

“That guy,” he whispered loudly to me, his eyes bulging, “is famous.”

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