Reflections on getting older…

I guess I would be what they call '”middle aged” now because nobody ever asks for my ID anymore--like I buy lots of alcohol and cigarettes—and I’m too young for those senior discounts that you get at places like Movies 12 and Perkins. And though I look at myself in the mirror everyday and probably don’t really see how much I have aged in the last 20 years, there are a few things that I have observed about my middle-aged self.  Here they are:

• The freshness doesn’t last.  Here’s what I mean by that:  After I shower in the morning and for about 4-6 hours afterward, I would say, I’m looking fairly decent for 44, but as I reach those afternoon and evening hours, I start to look remarkably similar to what one would term a “grease monkey”.  The bloom fades fast at my age, so,if you need to schedule an appointment with me, get me first thing in the morning while I still have a little freshness left.
• My skin is starting to look slightly leopard-like.  I have dark age spots on my back and my hands and you know that age-spot fade cream they advertise in magazines?  You have to use that stuff like 35 times a day to be less spotted.  I think I will just have to accept my leopard skin as status quo. Maybe I will buy a leopard print purse to match.
• When I go all out and get a pedicure, they have to get out the power tools just to get the callouses off my feet.  And the whole Ped-egg thing that I got at Target so my heels would be baby soft…it doesn’t work.
• When I see pictures of myself with my beautiful teenage girls (or my handsome sons), they look colorful and vivacious, and I look tired and faded.  See the freshness observation above.
• When people say that I look exhausted, I get really paranoid  because I think that the bags under my eyes must be getting even bigger and darker.  Most of the time when I hear this, I am not exhausted, I am just not as fresh as I was earlier in the day.
• When I get up in the morning, I try not to look at myself because I am so pale and un-fresh looking.  For those of you in boot camp with me at 5 a.m., this is why I always wear a hat. I figure that the shadow of the hat creates the optimum disguise for the puffiness under my eyes and the splotchiness of my leopard-like skin.
• When I wash my hair during my shower, I probably use double the shampoo I need because I can never remember if I already washed my hair or not, so I just wash it again. The same goes for laundry detergent.  I keep telling myself I need to come up with a system to help me remember if I added the soap already, but I keep forgetting to create this system.
• I find myself using the terms “what’s-her-name” and “that thing” a lot because the whole recall mechanism takes much longer now. I’m getting pretty good at using descriptive terms lately and letting my teenagers think of the names/words for me.
• I notice myself bragging to my family at the amount of vegetables I am able to fit in my smoothie in the mornings. I pride myself in my small accomplishments…it used to be how many miles I could run in the morning…now it’s whether I fit the edamame in the blender of not.
• I stay up way past my bedtime (8:24) writing out my feelings about being on the door-step of death.

So there you go.  Unappetizing? yes. True? yes. Pitiful? Probably.  Finished with observations? Finally. 

Excuse me now…my rocking chair is waiting.