Hasta La Gadget!

The world knows him as “Jihadi John,” the masked man with a British accent who has beheaded several hostages held by the Islamic State and who taunts audiences in videos circulated widely online.

After spending Valentine’s Day alone — curled up on the couch in the fetal position downing pints of ice cream in between fits of sobbing — the single 30-something (daughter of a) friend sought my opinion: She is considering freezing her eggs, postponing motherhood until a time down the road when she is married, she said. She asked me, “Does that make sense?”

Parenting, for me, is a two-person job. So yes, the idea of not becoming a single parent by choice while you work full-time makes perfect sense. While I give a lot of credit to those who parent alone, for me, single parenting would be a result of circumstance, not intention. But I also get that while single parenting is hard, so is the feeling that you’ve missed the boat. Egg-freezing is giving some women another boat to hop on, so brava to that. And then there’s singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins (who had 15 embryos frozen about 20 years ago) showing the world that becoming a mother at 50 is perfectly fine.

But “you are never too old to parent” isn’t really what we were talking about, my friend’s daughter and I. For years, she’s been saying that she is too busy focusing on her career to pay sufficient attention to her personal life. And for years, that’s not entirely been the truth. What has remained unspoken is this: She has really awful selection skills when it comes to prospective mates.

She has wasted about five years in an on-again/off-again relationship with the same man despite all the signs that he is unfaithful, commitment-phobic and wants different things than she professes to want. He, as her mother says, is just not “marriage material.”

Yet during the periods when they are split up, she is lonely and sad that he’s not around. During those periods, she spends hours on online dating sites where she writes off men as boring based on little more than their photo. “I can just tell there’s no chemistry,” she says. On occasion, she has sought comfort in one-night stands, which leave her feeling even emptier and lonelier.

So now the conversation has progressed to freezing her eggs, an attempt to trick her biological clock into slowing and giving her more time before becoming a mother. Egg-freezing — the medical term is oocyte cryopreservation — is the technological process during which a woman’s eggs are extracted, frozen and stored for safe-keeping. Later, when she wants to get pregnant, the eggs are thawed, fertilized, and transferred to her uterus as embryos. It’s an expensive process and not always covered by health insurance although increasingly, companies — Apple, Facebook and Citibank to name a few — are providing at least partial coverage for the process.

For women with cancer who will be undergoing chemotherapy treatment, it’s a godsend to know that your eggs can be harvested and preserved in this way. And for many young women like my friend’s daughter who want to delay pregnancy until their careers have evolved or they meet their life partner, it’s a process growing in popularity. Old eggs, they say, can be bad eggs. So better to freeze them when you — and your eggs — are young.

For years, I’ve told my friend’s daughter that she’s been looking for love in all the wrong places. I’ve urged her to let me and others — yes, her mother — fix her up on blind dates with men who are “known quantities,” who are marriage-minded and ready to settle down. More than once, I’ve advised her to dump the never-gonna-marry-you boyfriend and move on to one who will — because she says that a husband and family are what she wants.

But it wasn’t until the freezing egg conversation that I realized how misplaced my advice has been. You know what they say about how you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink? My friend’s daughter ignores my advice because she is unwilling to change anything about herself or what she values in a partner.

My friend’s daughter thinks her inability to form a permanent relationship in her 20s and 30s will miraculously reverse itself when she reaches her 40s. And all egg-freezing is doing is allowing her to believe in miracles. Harsh? Perhaps. But sometimes the solution lies within us, not in medical technology.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

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SPECIAL FROM Grandparents.com

Whether you already work and want to make more money, or are retired and looking to supplement your income, there are jobs out there that fit the bill.

“Many people who are retirement age opt for ‘patchwork careers’—they piece together a variety of jobs they can do from home or on their own schedule,” says Christine Durst, a home-based career expert and co-founder of RatRaceRebellion.com. Here are some great make-extra-money suggestions.

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There seems to be a pervasive attitude in my Gen X group that technology is destroying our youth. We worry they’ll be unable to succeed at face-to-face communication and connection and quite possibly sustain irrevocable neck damage from looking down at their smartphones all day.

But I’m also noticing an equally disturbing technological trend among midlifers.

Not too long ago, on a flight back from Boulder, Colorado, I struck up a conversation with my seatmate (who, btw, was living a double life. Foreshadowing).

He was wearing an interesting black bracelet on his wrist that occasionally emitted a blast of pink, neon numbers. Curious, I asked why his bracelet was making such a fuss.

He explained that the bracelet was a Jawbone Up — a device that tracks how many steps he takes each day, how many hours he sleeps at night and which of those hours are cycles of deep REM.

After this explanation, I noticed a second color blinking away on his wrist.

“What do the purple flashes mean?” I asked.

He couldn’t help but smile.

“Since you’re a stranger, I can tell you,” he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Those are the steps my mistress walked yesterday. The hours she slept last night. You see? She slept five hours in Sweden and I slept six in New York.”

His wife, at home in Palo Alto, doesn’t have a Jawbone.

I wondered how it was that an electronic bracelet had become this man’s conduit to intimacy and love? Did he think that its clean, antiseptic, numerical way of conducting an affair would keep potentially bloody, messy, devastating infidelity locked safely in a box? Who knows?

I have a dear 71-year-old friend who wears a different electric device — a “Fitbit” that tells her when she’s reached her 10,000-step goal for the day.

We recently vacationed together in Paris, where she has a flat, and she generously showed me the secret jewels of the city: the Institut du Monde Arabe with its telescoping, sun-sensitive windows, the Grande Mosquée de Paris with its stunning tiled garden, the Jardin du Luxembourg graced with an antique carousel, and so on.

But I found myself chafing at her brisk pace. There was no time to stop and eat a street crêpe, no time to lunch on baba ganoush at the mosque restaurant, no time to sit in the jardin and watch the miniature boats race on the pond. Then I realized my friend was chasing her 10,000 steps.

When she hit her 10,000th stride for the day, she reverted to the relaxed, irreverent, adorable lady I love, happy to leisurely feast on lapin roti and macaroons. But until then, she power-walked the Louvre, her petite legs moving with fierce determination up the graded ramps.

I wondered why my friend was in such a hurry? Why did it feel like she was running away from, instead of running towards something? Was the device her way of keeping old age — and its good friend, death — at bay?

As I contemplated this, I realized I was a slave to my own leg shackle, the kind felons wear when they’re under house arrest: my iPhone with the infernal My Fitness Pal app.

I’m six months shy of 50 and like most people my age, can no longer eat mindlessly without packing on unwanted pounds. Now each bite does not touch my lips before it’s fingerprinted, patted-down and cavity-searched on that hellish app.

Two ladles of oatmeal = 143 calories.

A tablespoon of butter = 102 calories.

A 10-ounce café latte with 2 percent milk with two sugar packets = 190 calories.

Three cups of light oil popcorn is my best bet. It’s the closest thing to eating air.

And I must leave room for 10 ounces of pinot noir (242 calories) if I want to retain any semblance of life being worth living.

In Paris, as I tried with great frustration, to find the calories in a bowl of Moules à la crème Normande (there was no English translation!), I found myself in the midst of a minor crisis, which forced me to stop and ponder the question: Is the quantification of our lives stealing the remainder of them?

Are we so afraid of loving, eating and dying that we have to compartmentalize our bodies, our relationships, our entire lives into electronic calculators?

I worry we’ve become so adept at defining life with our little machines, explaining our existence, creating a sense of purpose in things that mean nothing, that we’ve lost the moment.

So tonight I’m going to sit down to dinner and turn my device off. I’m going to look at my food. I’m going to taste it. Smell it. And not see it as numbers floating in front of my eyes. Because no matter how many times I try to calculate everything in my life, I know that it’s going to end.

And I want to have lived it.

Do you think you have a device addiction? How does it manifest and what do you do to try to detox?

To keep in touch with Shannon you can Like her on Facebook or Opt-In to her Updates.

This piece was first published in Purple Clover.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

SPECIAL FROM Next Avenue

By Linda Melone

When you’re under the weather with a cold or achy muscles or joints, it may be best to skip your regular workout. But it’s not always necessary.

Obviously, a severe injury requires rest, but for less serious ailments, a little activity may actually make you feel better. Here are some of the most common health issues you are likely to encounter and ways to exercise around them as well as when you should avoid working out:

You Feel a Cold Coming On

If you have mostly “head symptoms” like a scratchy throat, mild headache or runny nose, you can likely go ahead with your workout with a few adjustments, says Dr. Kristine Arthur, internal medicine physician with Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center, Fountain Valley, Calif.

“Avoid strenuous activities like sprints, a marathon, boot camp or heavy lifting,” she says. “Heavy exercise while sick can strain your heart.”

If you normally run, consider a light jog or brisk walk, preferably indoors during cold weather. “Pilates and yoga are usually fine, but avoid hot yoga, as you may become overheated,” Arthur says.

You Have a Sinus Infection

If you have anything more severe than a runny nose and suspect you may have a sinus infection, see a doctor before doing your regular exercise, Arthur says.

“If you stress yourself with exercise and don’t get proper treatment for sinusitis, it can turn into something more serious, like pneumonia,” she says.

Be particularly careful if you have a history of asthma. Exercise can trigger bronchial spasm. Stop exercising if you hear yourself wheezing or feel you can’t catch your breath, Arthur says.

You Spike a Fever… and More

It’s best to stay home and avoid working out if you have “full body symptoms,” Arthur says. “This includes symptoms like muscle aches, chills, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea and particularly if you have a fever.”

Exercising with a fever of 100 degrees or higher puts you at risk for increasing your temperature even further.

“Never try to ‘sweat out’ a fever with exercise,” Arthur says. “This can put you at risk of dehydration. In general, listen to your body. If you start feeling worse while exercising – stop! You may make things worse and prolong the illness.”

You Develop Elbow Tendonitis

Called tennis elbow or golfer’s elbow, depending on whether it’s on the outside of your elbow (tennis) or inside (golfer’s), this syndrome makes it painful to shake hands, hold a racket or turn a wrench.

“Avoid any activity that triggers the pain, such as practicing backhand in tennis, painting or using a tool repetitively,” says Dr. David Geier, orthopedic surgeon in Charleston, S.C. “Upper body exercises that don’t recreate the pain should be alright to do.”

Supportive straps worn just below the elbow can also take stress off the affected area and can help you perform activities with less pain.

Your Wrists Ache

Wrist arthritis makes it painful to bear weight on your wrists and hands, such as while doing push-ups.

“The pushup places the wrist in full extension while the person transfers stress through the wrists,” Geier says. Avoid exercises that cause pain, or modify the move. For example, try push-ups on dumbbells (grasp them to enable your wrists to stay straight). Or wear wrist braces that limit the range of motion, which can help decrease pain during the exercise, Geier says.

It Hurts to Walk

Inflammation of a thick band of tissue, called the plantar fascia, that runs along the bottom of your foot and connects to your heel, is called plantar fasciitis. It’s common in runners, overweight individuals and in people who wear shoes without good support.

“It is unclear if any activity is particularly harmful with plantar fasciitis,” Geier says. “The biggest problem is getting up from a chair and going straight into physical activity or waking up and moving around a lot.”

Plantar fascia- and Achilles stretching exercises first thing in the morning, and possibly several times a day, can help.

You Have General Aches and Pains

Waking up with achy muscles from simply doing more than your usual activities the day before can be eased with stretching or by using a foam roller.

“Use a foam roller to promote flexibility of your mid-back and stretch your pectoral muscles (across the front of your chest),” says Jesse Phillips, sports rehabilitation supervisor at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. “If you have knee pain, using a foam roller followed by stretches can help improve the mobility of the hip, knee and ankle.”

Keep in mind the difference between the discomfort associated with muscles working hard and excessive strain being placed on joints/ligaments/tendons, Phillips says.

“Moving a joint or muscle to the point of mild stretch is typically acceptable, but moving through pain is not,” he said. “If you are concerned about the potential of the latter kind of pain, consult a physician or a physical therapist for an evaluation.”

Next Avenue contributor Linda Melone is a California-based freelance writer specializing in health, fitness and wellness for women over 50.

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