Depending on how you look at it, this boomer has either crossed to the dark side or walked into the light.

Kathleen Norton

After some harrowing, hair-pulling experiences in front of the computer, which I decided not to shoot because it feels no pain anyway, I’ve got a new e-book. It’s called, “If 50 is the new 30, then 30 ain’t what it used to be!’’

Some of you are saying, “Say it isn’t so! Don’t tell us you made a book without paper! You traitor!’’

But some are saying, “Rock on!”

We boomers are at the point in our lives when we see fast change as either a turn-on or a turn-off.

I know boomers who live on “twitter,’’ and I know boomers who think cell phones are a passing fancy. The rest, like me, are somewhere in the middle.

I know that if I did not have a cell phone, I’d still be wandering around the big box store where my husband got lost two days ago. Or, as he tells it, I got lost and he had to track me down through subtle text messages like, “Where the #$%* did you go?’’

My big e-move forward started with a little tiny gesture.

Several speed-reading friends who used to collect many volumes each year got new e-readers like Kindles and iPads and fell in love with them. One of them said, “You should put your newspaper humor columns into an e-book.’’

I think she was trying to steer the conversation away from my bragging about my granddaughters and their amazing developmental achievements.

Whatever the reason, her comment got me thinking: “How hard could it be?”

Some of it wasn’t. I’ve been slogging away week after week in front of a computer for years, trying to come up with stuff to write. I was used to that.

The tough parts were these:

1. Wrapping my head around the idea of being the author-editor-publisher-everything-rolled-into-one.
2. Making the computer do what it is supposed to do (mine, for example, simply does not listen to shouted instructions).
3. Hiring people online to help with some stuff I couldn’t accomplish – people I will never meet in person and I have no clue where they live.

Somehow, I found a good crew in Donna, Maureen, and Rich (if those are their real names.)

But the hardest part of all were those last strokes on the keyboard that transported me into the world of e-publishing.
The momentous occasion went like this: Tap. Tap. Tap. You have a book.

It was not what I had dreamed years ago when I was curled up at the public library in Kearny, N.J., reading “Little Women’’ and vowing that some day I too would be a writer like “Jo.”

Of course, in my dream, I was wearing a bonnet and long skirts like hers.

The reality, though, was that on the big day, I was in pajamas. The e-book was on the screen, not in my hands. Still, some very cool possibilities lie ahead.

That is the world we live in today, boomers. I think it’s worth gambling. There’s room for old and new.
I hope you think so too.

Our wool hats and scarves are barely tucked away and KAPOW! Every clothing store on earth has put out racks of little, bitty, colorful bathing suits that assault us when we walk in the door.

Kathleen Norton

It’s the fashion version of “shock and awe’’ and I ask: Must they remind us that soon, all women no matter how tall, short, narrow, or wide begin a period of ritual self-loathing, also known as Swimsuit Season?

If a woman’s hefty, she thinks every suit makes her look heftier. If she’s scrawny, she thinks they make her look scrawnier.

And men do not get it why bathing suits make us suffer so. They just don’t.

Oh sure, they complain about a little flab here and there. They may look in the mirror too when they are 62 and come to this startling realization: OMG! I am not young anymore!

But for the most part, they float along, not caring how they look in a bathing suit except for when a 20-year-old chick walks by at the beach.

For them though, this concern passes quickly and soon they are back to bathing suit la-la land, which explains why you see guys in little Speedos when their little Speedo days obviously ought to be over.

A man would wear the same swimsuit from age 20 to 70 if his wife did not stop him.

“You’re not getting on that ship for our anniversary cruise in the bathing suit you wore on our honeymoon!’’ the woman says.

“But those trunks are only 35 years old!’’ he replies.

“I have crow’s feet older than that. Get a new one,’’ she orders, and he goes to the store and buys the first one he sees.

For the woman? As we all know, it’s not the same.

She would not be caught dead in an old suit because she thinks that like every other one she’s owned since about her 29th birthday, it looks bad on her.

So the woman goes to the store for a new swimsuit and tries on 483 of them.

She repeats this ritual in 13 other stores which, if you are keeping track, is 6,279 swimsuits taken on and off.

Then she orders 146 more online and has to pay to send all of them back because none is right.

Now she has tried on 6,425 suits, spent $1,460 on return shipping, and adds “buy wig’’ to the To-Do List because she’s pulled out her hair in frustration.

After a good cry and a vow to undo damage from a late-winter delivery of Girl Scout Cookies, she starts again.

Eventually, she finds a suit she likes. Loosely translated in woman-speak this means she hates it less than the others.

On the cruise, he thinks he looks great –– guy-gut and all. She hardly dares to breathe and let out her stomach.

Turns out the “tummy control’’ tag that came with her suit, and every suit these days, is propaganda worthy of the old Communist Party.

Which takes us back to those racks of bathing suits in all the stores.

We could let them get the best of us again this year. Or, ladies, we could buy them up and have a spectacular polyester bonfire.

Matches, anyone?

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The more fish oil and calcium pills we consume in our empty nest, the more we run around in a foggy haze of age denial. Some days, we even “overdose’’ and Shazam! We are forty once again!

At least in our heads.

Kathleen Norton

And that is how we ended up sprawled on a bike trail, one of us bleeding and our energy bars squished beyond recognition, while three cute Canadian cycling guys with French accents stood there wondering what we had crashed into.

The truth was, we had crashed into each other. But that’s getting ahead of the story. Let’s begin at the beginning.

It was one of those days when we not only took fish oil and calcium, but I had popped some soy supplement and he had taken multi-vitamins. We were on a middle-aged high, which is kind of like how we felt in college – minus the loud music, the beer, and the ability to stay awake for Saturday Night Live.

In our state of vitamin inebriation, we didn’t bother to scrounge around for our dollar-store reading glasses and check the warning labels. If we had, we would have read this: “Too much of this stuff makes you act stupid and, frankly, your knees can’t take that ridiculously long bike ride you have in mind.”

So in our ignorance, off we went with our bikes and the energy bars and lo and behold, halfway through the ride my left knee started aching and I wanted to quit.

That’s when two other bikers passed us. She was about 25. Her partner? He was at least twice that, and was NOT her father.

“Gross,’’ I sighed.

My partner? “I see nothing wrong with that,” he said.

I turned to argue but what happened next is a lesson for all women: freely give your mate a piece of your mind, but not while on a bike. With my eyes off the path, the bikes got close, we snagged handlebars, and zigzagged out of control.

Kathleen with her husband, Gerry McNulty.

“This is what a ‘hook-up’ means at our age!’’ I yelled.

“Stop joking! Save the energy bars!’’ he yelled back and pushed my bike forward so he wouldn’t crash on me.

But in saving me, he went down hard and gashed his leg. His sock quickly turned blood-red.

Enter the cute Canadians.

They rode upon us just then. I put on a smile and dusted off my French language skills.

“Le Band-Aid?’’ I asked, and tried to make small talk. He stood there bloody, not at all impressed with my innocent attempt to improve international relations.

They gave us a bandage and peddled off while we headed back to our car.

“That was soooo nice of them!’’ I gushed. He gave me a look that clearly said it was time to forget about the cute Canadians.

So I did, and there are a few more things about that day I’d like to forget, too.

The silly argument that started it all (though I know I am right).

The bloody sock we’ll never get back to white.

The tragic loss of three perfectly good mocha-chocolate energy bars.

And the discovery that fish oil and calcium give you a high, but later you really crash.

Trust me. We have the dented bicycles to prove it.

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Thanks to hot flashes, my 52-year-old baby boomer sweat glands work harder than Hollywood’s plastic surgeons. So doesn’t it make perfect sense that if you produce enough sweat to power a nuclear reactor, you are losing weight?

At least it made perfect sense at 2 a.m. as I leaped out of bed to turn on the fan, turn off the heat and tear off all the covers. “That’s it!” I cried. Menopause is the answer!”

“Huh? What? Give me a blanket,” my poor husband said. “‘I’m freezing.”

“Roll over,” I said. “It’s just a bad dream.”

“You have no idea,” he mumbled and tried to cover himself with ruffly pillow shams.

The next morning, I was ready to attack the mall and try on smaller clothes, completely ignoring the fact that my old clothes fit the same as before. But nothing will stop a woman – from the largest to the smallest – if she thinks she’s found a way to drop a few pounds without trying.

Just ask my sister. We spent years trolling the diet world together.

We did the Beer-and-Bananas Diet. We lost no weight, but giggled all day. We did the Eat-All-Your-Calories-By-11 a.m.-Then-Starve-All-Day-Diet. That lasted until noon on the first day. We ordered “diet candy” (remember chocolate “AYDS?”) and ate the whole box in 48 hours. It was supposed to last four weeks.

We almost bought a plastic suit that hooked to a vacuum and promised to make you buff while you cleaned. We wanted smaller thighs… but not so badly that we’d do more housework. And after all that, I thought, it turns out there is going to be an upside to being a human inferno.

I explained my theory at breakfast. “Every night I sweat. Every day I sweat. It’s gotta pay off,” I said.

My husband looked confused. “Let me get this straight. Menopause, which you said yesterday is making you crazy, is now making you lose weight?” he said.

He circled around me slowly to see if I was armed. I thought he was evaluating my backside.

“What? I look fat? Are you saying I look fat?!?” I glared.

He did not respond. He did what he has learned through experience is the best way to handle this question. He went to the garage. Quickly.

Kathleen Norton

My first stop at the mall was the jeans rack, where all pants smaller than my usual size refused to go up over my keyster. The same happened with dresses and skirts, and in the Bathing Suit Department, where I invented four gymnastic moves as I tried to squeeze into things I had no business squeezing into.

There were only two possible explanations.

A) Every size tag was wrong.

B) My menopause weight-loss theory was for the birds.

Depressed, I sank into a chair in the shoe department, where an eager young salesgirl hungry for a commission shoved a sizing gadget on my foot. “Looks like 6-1/2,” she chirped.

As a major hot flash swept over me, I turned to her and said. “Look Tinkerbell, my feet have not been that small since I gave birth 28 years ago.”

“Well, they are a six-and-a-half now,” she sniffed. I looked down and could not believe my eyes. The menopause weight loss plan had worked, all right. But only on my feet.

That’s when my husband strolled by. “I lost weight in two places,” I huffed and wiped my brow. “Right foot and left foot. Geez, turn off that heat, would ya Tinkerbell?”

The poor man married to me looked at my steaming face. He looked at the frightened salesgirl. Then he did what any husband would do if his menopausal wife was in a rage because her feet lost weight.

He spun around, headed for the door and yelled: “I’ll be out in the car!”

You can read more of Kathleen’s humor at http://kathleennorton1.wordpress.com.