Aging

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It seemed to happen just like that.

We are trying to find a small group to attend with folks from our group.  It has been a bit of a challenge and I’ve had a bad attitude about it.

Humph.

We went last night (me mentally kicking and screaming while physically bearing homemade sweet rolls and smiling….faker…..). It was really a lovely group.  As JD said, he liked the spiritual vibe of the group.  They were sweet and oh so welcoming.

But seriously, I’ve got 15 years on all of them.  At least.  They all have little bitty kids.  Like, ones that can’t talk yet.  And they haven’t given their maternity clothes or baby equipment away.  They are trying to figure out careers and family and school.  They wear cool glasses and shoes and have cute haircuts and perky b………

Well, you get the picture.

And I was whining to JD about it last night.

“But honey, I feel old there.  No one has kids our age.  They are so young and not anywhere near where we are in life.  We’ve done all that school and career and baby stuff.  Where are the women my age?

AND WHY DOES NONE OF THIS BOTHER YOU?!

But today I’m feeling differently about it.

Maybe we are supposed to be the older couple in this group.  Maybe the fact that we have gone through a lot of these experiences and come out the other side will be helpful to somebody.  Not because we have any great amount of wisdom but there is something to be said about the perspective you have on things in your 40s.

Maybe we are there just to let them know you can survive these years with very young children, because Lord have mercy, wouldn’t you have loved to have someone tell you that when you were in the middle of it?

So perhaps being the older woman won’t be so bad after all.

Maybe.

Aging…..evidently

I must suddenly have aged several years in the past few days because all of a sudden I’m having things like this happen.

Today I went into Sephora to buy a couple of things. The lady behind the counter (who is at LEAST 10 years older than me) tells me that today is my lucky day because they are giving away free samples. I have three things to choose from.

“There is this set from Clinique. You won’t want that one. It’s for acne. Or there is this Smash Box lip gloss. But here is the one you’ll want. It’s Lancome’s new ANTI-AGING cream.”

Because evidently I was aging right before her very eyes.

I guess she didn’t feel the full force of my steely stare because she followed it up with this comment.

“You know they are having a sale at ________.”

(I am not filling in the blank because I’m sure for some this is a very nice store but in my mind it is a store that is frequented by women of a certain age. OF WHICH I AM NOT!)

I took the anti-aging cream just to be on the safe side.

When I was in high school, Saturday Night Live was in its heyday. I loved “Land Shark” and Rosanna Rosanna Danna, and John Belushi doing just anything. And of course Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtain doing “Point/Counterpoint.

Unfortunately since my name is Sara Jane this led to one boy (Jeff Cartwright) saying to me many, many, many times a week,
“Jane you ignorant slut.”

No, Jeff, time has not dimmed this pain. If anybody runs into him, please let him know I’m still getting over it.

Just kidding.

Mostly.

Anyway, JD found this site that lets you download a photo of yourself, click a few prompts and it finds the celebrity you most resemble and morphs your face into theirs.

Guess who I turned into?

MyHeritage: Family treesGenealogyCelebrities

I guess Jeff was right. But just about the “Jane” part. I’m still disagreeing with the “ignorant” and “slut” part.

On Friday I was certain that the stress of our upcoming move had finally caused me to snap.

I lost my phone.  Not just a “wonder where I put that thing this time” kind of lost, but the “turn your house upside down” kind of lost.

I remembered looking at the clock at 4:35 and thinking that I needed to call my Mom.  So I did.  I was standing in the kitchen talking to her when I looked down to see water coming out from the cabinet doors under the sink.  I quickly said goodbye and pulled everything out and cleaned up the water.  Then I looked up to see that I was 7 minutes late picking Elena up from Brownies.

So I shoved my feet into my flip flops, grabbed my keys and high tailed it down to the school which is all of a half mile away.  I pulled up to see my friend Lisa standing with her phone up to her ear.  She had just been calling me to see if Elena could come to her house for a while.  (Why of course she can. Thank you very much!).

I didn’t get her call becuase, remember, I had left my phone on the kitchen counter.

Or so I thought.

I went home to finished getting dinner ready.  My friend Candy came over and all of a sudden I realized that I hadn’t seen my phone in a while.  I looked in the kitchen. No phone.

Upstairs. No phone.

Downstairs. No phone.

Laundry room, bathrooms, car, front steps, neighbors front steps, back deck, jean pockets, and any other place I could think of.

No phone.

We called my phone repeatedly thinking we’d hear it ring or vibrate.  At first it would ring several times and then it started going straight to voice mail.

Nothing.

It’s like it had been raptured or something.

The only clue we had was Katie saying that while I was gone to pick up Elena, she heard my phone ring and then it sounded kind of muffled.

Candy left (wow, I’m sure that evening will rank right up there as the MOST FUN EVER!) and JD and I looked in all those places again.  The dishes had been done and after watching me walk around the house talking to myself JD finally told me to just go to bed.

We woke up Saturday morning and he said, “Did you look in the garbage disposal?”

I scoffed at him.  How could it possibly be there.  And, by the way, didn’t you use the disposal when you were washing the dishes?

“Ah, no.  Actually I didn’t.”

Guess what was in the disposal.

This is my recreation of what actually happened.

When I saw the water under the cabinets I laid the phone down just a little too close to the edge of my undermounted sink.  As I was driving to get Elena, my friend Lisa called my phone causing it to vibrate into the sink and down into the disposal.  Where for the next several hours it was repeatedly doused by running water and finally drowned.

At least I’ve not lost my mind.

Yet.

How did this

Katie 2001

Katie 2001

Become this?

Katie 2009

Katie 2009

It happened right in front of my nose and yet sometimes I feel like I missed it.  I turned my head for just a minute and she changed from toddler to preteen.   She’s changed in a million and one ways.

And yet in some ways not so very much at all.

JD and Katie  circa 2003

JD and Katie circa 2003

She’s still a Daddy’s girl.

Every minute of the day.

Katie and JD  circa 2009

Katie and JD circa 2009

I don’t think that will ever change.

She Knows Her Mommy

As I mentioned yesterday, I had a whale of a birthday weekend.

But I have to say that the sweetest thing that happened came after I had returned home and had put the girls to bed.

Before long I heard the patter of little feet coming down the stairs and then Elena handed me this.

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Best birthday card ever.

Thanks, Elena

My 46th (Holy Cow!) year got off to a fine start. Two other couples joined JD and I on a weekend extravaganza to celebrate. We scored primo rooms at a beautiful resort (Thanks, Julie!), had some great wine (We can always count on you for that Anna and Alan!), wonderful conversation and glorious food including a bowl of grits that even my grit hating husband couldn’t keep his spoon out of.

There were many highlights.

This room.

dsc_0226See the left hand corner of that sofa? I spent a great deal of time curled up there laughing and drinking with our friends. This was also the place where we had french fries with truffle oil and sparkling wine for dinner. I’ll pay for that this week on the treadmill, but it was worth every bite.

We toured Monticello and found that we want to both like Thomas Jefferson a lot for all the good stuff he did and were also very disheartened about his refusal to deal with the slavery issue in his own household.

I do love this quote from him that the girls and I think we’ll adopt as our family motto:

http://www.loc.gov/shop/images/catalog/items/enlarge/enlarge_21305033.jpg

It is a beautiful house.

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I am a very blessed woman for many, many reasons. This weekend I was blessed both by these people

JD, Me, Alan, Anna, Julie and Jim

JD, Me, Alan, Anna, Julie and Jim

and by my dear friends who kept my children for me so that I could enjoy time alone with this blue-eyed boy

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It’s going to be a very good year, indeed.

Run, Baby Run

A couple of years ago it became clear that my metabolism was not what is used to be. By that, I mean that I could no longer eat a whole sleeve of Girl Scout cookies (trefoils, please. I’m a purist.) and not see the results of it the next time I tried to put on my jeans.

And since I made a vow long ago that I would never allow my butt to be bigger than my husband’s, I knew I had to take action.

For a while increasing the speed of my walks helped, but it didn’t last. I realized that I was going to have to step things up a bit. I’d run on and off for years and thought that picking that back up might do the trick.

Here’s the thing. I never really liked to run. I’d be miserable the first half mile, cussing by the second and giving up by the third. I’d get shin splints and my feet would hurt. I’d be consistent for several weeks and then fall off the wagon completely.

Until now.

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Podrunner Intervals have totally changed the way I feel about running. The music is good and the pace is just fast enough to make me break a sweat without being so fast that I think I might die. Because I’d been running a bit before I started the first one, I jumped right into the 8K weeks. Now I’m on week 4 of the 10K and really enjoying it. It’s motivating and it moves you along so gradually that you hardly realize that you are running a little bit farther and longer each week.

So get some good fitting running shoes (this is REALLY important, so have someone fit you who knows what they are doing) and download these mixes (either directly from the website above or from itunes) and get started.

Your butt will thank you.

I had my annual eye exam today.

I was feeling pretty good about myself when I walked in there. In spite of dreary, rainy weather, I was having a good hair day and I’d spent the morning in the company of a group of women who always make me glad to be around them.

I wasn’t even letting the fact that this particular doctor’s office seems to only hire office workers that have 24 inch waists and flawless skin and look fresh out of high school bother me.

Then he said this.

“Well, Sara, your eyes look very healthy but I think it’s time we talk about progressive lenses.”

I was hoping that progressive lenses was a new technology that would allow me to wear glasses without having my eyes magnified to the size of Mr. Magoo.

You nearsighted people, you have no idea how lucky you are

News flash. Guess what?

Progressive lenses = BIFOCALS!!!

I’d have gotten up and whacked him if he hadn’t robbed me of my contacts and therefore rendered me blind as a bat.

I’m probably just days away from my first hip replacement and a set of dentures.