Gratitude Monday - You Asked For It Edition

Some of you, at least two, let it be known in the comments patch that you wanted to see a photo of Mike and me at our simple dinner out for my 50th birthday on Saturday.

I am grateful that you asked, and grateful that we managed to get a photo of ourselves that was adequate.

Dinner was very good. We made happy hogs of ourselves and I went to heaven on the sticky toffee pudding at dessert. I'm grateful for that, too.

How Old Do You Think I Am?

Inquiring siskins want to know.

For me the real question is how old do I think I am?
I’ve heard it said, by someone probably famous, that you’re only as old as you feel.
A good, sensible saying. If you feel old and lousy then you’ll act it and you’ll become it. I’m not about to go that route.
However, I was thinking about it last night as I was cleaning up after the evening meal: I don’t know how old I feel.
I have no idea what my current age, 49 ½, is supposed to feel like so a compare and contrast exercise is out of the question.
I’ve had this problem for years. I remember back when I was covering Provincial Court and would hear an accused’s was 40.

“Oooh, she’s old,” I’d think. Then I’d remember I was 41.

If I concentrate I would guess I feel somewhere in my 30s. Until I squat down for something out of a low cupboard and have to think, very seriously, about the process involved in standing back up.
Other than that, I have to consciously remember my age. Another factor is I’m not sure that I look like I’m closing in on 50. I don’t look anywhere near that age to me.
It seems to me I have felt the age I was at other ages. I think I got stuck somewhere and decided it was a good place to stay.
Logically, if I don’t look it and don’t feel it, then all I have left is chronology. It’ll have to do.

Pine Siskin photo courtesy my husband, Mike Mayrl.

Sweatin’ With the Oldies

The Bag Lady wrote such an entertaining guest post for The Goat’s Lunch Pail last month that I insisted she do another one.
Here it is:

Sweatin’ With the Oldies

The Bag Lady has a little problem to discuss with all of you regarding the effects of aging. Well, actually, the Bag Lady has a lot of problems, but this is the one on her tiny mind today!

There’s a television commercial for a certain type of moisturizing cream that shows a woman covering her head with the blankets, saying "I’m starting to get wrinkles." When she takes the blankets off her head, she looks about 14 years old, not a wrinkle in sight.

What’s with that?

What kind of message is that sending those of us who actually DO have a wrinkle or two? The Bag Lady wonders; is life over because she has a few laugh lines? Couldn’t they have at least used someone with a few more years under her belt? That commercial doesn’t make a person want to buy their product – it makes a person want to slit her wrists!
There’s not a moisturizer on the market that’s going to make the Bag Lady look half as good as that ‘child’, so why bother?

There’s another commercial for eyeglasses. The slender, gorgeous woman was turning 50 and wanted to up-date her look, or something. As loath as the Bag Lady is to admit it, she will be 50 in a couple of months, so decided she needed to up-date her look, too, but eye-glasses just weren’t going to cut it!

The Bag Lady needed to lose a little extra poundage, and get into better shape, as well as discard for once and for all her totally disgusting smoking habit. Well, so far she’s lost 15 lb., re-gained 5 lb., quit smoking for a month, and then started again, quit again, and started again. Maybe she’ll just get new glasses and say the hell with it!

There’s a lot to be said for turning 50. For some reason, it makes you want to sit down and take stock of your life. Well, at least, it makes the Bag Lady want to sit down.
Her hips hurt. Her legs hurt, too. She can’t work as hard as she once could. Nor as fast, either. She starts out with good intentions, but runs out of steam pretty quickly. Well, except for the steam caused by the hot flashes, but that certainly doesn’t help get anything done! Just makes her want to sit down again.

The Bag Lady probably shouldn’t complain - things could be a lot worse. She has enjoyed good health for most of her life, except for a nasty battle with heel spurs that lasted three years. She finally had to have them blasted with shock-wave therapy. It took a little while, but it worked. Her feet feel a lot better.

Now her hips and legs hurt. Apparently, her pain is caused by back trouble. One of her vertebrae has slipped forward and is pinching her spinal cord, which is what causes the pain in her hips and down her legs. Sheesh, just when one part starts to heal up, another part goes to hell.

The Bag Lady wonders; is this what turning 50 does to a person? Your body goes to hell and you start complaining to everyone who’ll listen?

The problem with that is that nobody cares – they have their own problems! So from now on, she thinks what turning 50 should be about is to make a vow not to bore people to death with a litany of the problems with her bodily functions and to try to appear interested when she’s subjected to a litany of someone else’s problems with their bodily functions. Well, except their bowel functions…the Bag Lady has to draw the line somewhere!

Yep, new eyeglasses might be just the thing – and they’ll probably have to be bifocals.