From the looks of it my daily posts ended January 8th. That sounds about right. I have seemed to slow down and I am unable to breeze through activities the way I used to.
Age. It’s a getting older thing.
Granted I do have more on my plate than the average bear and I keep piling it on because that’s the way I am. I am also lazy like a sloth and I like nothing better than to do nothing so it’s a constant push and pull.
Yin and Yang, Trial and Error, Reach For the Stars, Grab the Brass Ring – you understand.
I’m okay with it, sort of. I’ve accepted that a full life involves a certain amount of triage and some days writing doesn’t rank.
The problem is that old saying – jack of all trades, master of none.
And so I press on.
I’m trying very hard to master my life and every small mess up like the wine I’ve had during what Galby has christened my moist January – every little mess up or step outside my list of life goals – it adds up.
I am smart enough to know that it can add up to running in place but also forgiving enough to understand that sometimes it is just like this and squeezing a bit of joy out of life is also good enough – and that is always available to me because I have learned how to be happy and how to live well with what’s available to me.
Basically, no matter what foolery swirls around, I’m happy. I’m happy to be alive and happy I can take care of myself and happy with where I live and with what I do every day. It’s like I won some medal called happy and I get to wear it even if I’m in my pajamas watching bad T.V. and eating peanut butter with a spoon.
Actually I don’t do the peanut butter thing, that’s Rachel. I just sort of start grazing at night and if there are any crackers and dip around, watch out. At night is when I lose it. I enter some time warp continuum where I have no motivation and can not recall any promises to myself especially the one to go to bed early and to not snack. I want to play music then go to bed but sometimes I just scroll Facebook eating nuts because it’s all I can muster.
Right now both of my boys are home and they eat late. So I’m smelling food at 11pm when I should be asleep.
No wonder I haven’t written. Truth be told with both boys here my main goal is to Keep Calm and Carry On. Adult children at home is no joke difficult for everyone involved. Only it’s my house so kids gotta man up and make their own house if they don’t like it.
But I am serene. I have earned this serenity and relative peace and I am holding on as bravely as I know how to.
Excuse me if I haven’t written or played my banjo and fiddle as much as I wanted to this week or made my bed and folded the laundry. Excuse me if my charts have built up to piles inside my office that both amaze and shame me.
I’ll get to it.
I’ll get to all of it and maybe there will be a little progress or maybe I’ll do just enough to hold everything together – with scotch tape. But I WILL GET TO IT DAMMIT!
Last night I had dinner with someone I’ve known since medical school. The night I got together with my husband I went to a party where I would have loved to have ended up with him instead. Instead we both dated other people in medical school and in life both married and divorced and then dated more other people and he is remarried now and I am not and it’s been thirty-five years of loosely knowing each other with a few tight moments thrown in just to confuse things.
He has always made me swoon and always been something of a dorky enigma.
We have gotten together a couple of times, talked frankly about our lives, flirted with more, been happy with less and gone through long periods of not talking. His current wife hates hates hates me because before I knew they were going to marry I was suspicious of her based on what little I knew and when early in the relationship she seemed to be sinking her claws into my boy deep and fast I said she was pissing all over his Facebook page and she must have stalked his private messages because that did not go over well. I said it because that woman was marking her territory like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I saw some huge red flags but all that got me is kicked off his Facebook forever, banned from his private life and the eventual consolation prize that’s called being right.
I don’t know who texted whom first recently but it was out of the blue and unexpected and probably only happened the way it did because he travels for business and has been in the Bay Area recently.
So we had dinner.
Leading up to it I had moments of feeling sad about my neck. I felt the way people do when they attend reunions and wish they could wow everyone by streaming in looking like J-Lo but instead realize that at almost sixty all we have is a big smile and our accomplishments to bowl folks over. We focus on our sagging neck and expanding middle. It’s dumb but we all do it. I tried not to do it but first I got long pink extensions and then I realized that at certain angles I looked like a drag queen or whatever happened to baby Jane and the maintenance was insane so I took them out, cut my hair short again, bleached it up blonde and showed up looking like Sharon Stone made a baby with an overweight Q-Tip.
As you can tell by all these photos taken within a two week period: the struggle is real but/and I’m trying!!!!!! Too hard probably so it’s a no to the extensions.
My hair needs to be whiter but instead it has some leftover brassy yellow from having been pink. Corrective color is on the books but our dinner was last night and all I could do about the hair was smile big.
Same with my middle. My gut has really gotten away from me. I have always been a round girl but now my weight – the same weight I’ve mostly been all my life – is centered around my mid-section. I profess to be working on losing it and I often am making efforts in that direction but I’m not consistent enough to do anything but prevent it from getting worse. I guess that’s an accomplishment?
So when the day arrived and I hadn’t lost thirty pounds or had a face lift I was excited but there was also a bit of trepidation in having to meet up old. Not older – OLD.
I’ve never minded older and I did older well for ages because basically I didn’t show any signs of aging until fifty-six or so. Now in just the last three years it’s like someone took a pin and popped me like a balloon and all the bits that are supposed to be full and plump like my butt are deflated. Same time my skin is stretched out so that it no longer holds in my vital organs and fat as tightly and well as before so I’m loose and I jiggle and I have straight up jowls. I could go on but I’m already disgusting myself by being both accurate and by even caring.
I know that to live a good life from here on out I need to care enough to get dressed in the morning but not care so much that obsess about how I look. It is what it is and one must make peace with life in a way that honors the struggle.
It turns out none of my shame and angst needed to happen. The minute I saw Jim I felt pure joy and happiness in reconnecting with my old friend. He was funnier and cuter and smarter than I remember and I fell in love with him all over again. I did not think once about my aging form until we stood up to leave and we both did a little creaky thing trying to stand up straight. It was adorable.
I fell in love with him enough that I felt a pang of sadness when it was time to leave. Our days of talking on the phone nearly every day are over. It’s unlikely we’ll see each other again soon, though I know we will meet up eventually. I am still not allowed on his Facebook page even though I offered to post my ugliest picture (and y’all know I do fugly super well because I’m not just a pretty face!). There is no path for us despite our excellent connection and the fact that our natural rapport and intimacy are undeniable.
I feel like last night life gave me an unexpected big hug and I am grateful.
I’m not gong to lie and say things are easy right now. I’m getting up every day and shouldering an amazing amount with all the grace I can muster. My heart is trampled but triumphant.
And I am keeping on keeping on the best I can.
I still prefer being single and my affinity for Jim is just one of those wistful things in life that is both a big deal and completely meaningless. I can admire and adore him without ever have really gotten entangled in the muck of living and that’s fine with me at this point, even when I’m left wanting more of him.
I had a few things happen this week that brought me to tears but Jim wasn’t one of them. The tears thing happens when I skin my knee out of the blue and there’s no one to kiss my boo boo or lend a helping hand.
Thing number one that happened is that I was out on a hike and dropped my car fob/key and I had to pay 650 bucks for a locksmith to come out and make me a replacement. I can rant all I want to about this insane scammy practice of engineering everything that was already fine and not broken like a KEY in to some impossible to operate and likely to break and expensive to replace upgrade. Fug the FOB. A key used to cost $1.25 to duplicate and replace but now you need to replace your FOB’s battery and if you lose it you need a new FOB and reprogramming and its super costly. How do poor people deal with a key that costs more than a month’s rent? I need to stop talking about this because I get really worked up about FOBs but I need to finish by saying that despite scouring my hiking route the day I lost my key, I went back to hike yesterday and walked right up to my lost FOB. I happened to look down found it on the grass and it’s some kind of cosmic joke and whatever.
The second thing that happened is my new exuberant husky-lab-pit puppy Rayna ran into me full speed as I was feeding everyone a few mornings ago and knocked me down. I was carrying pig scratch and dog kibble in both hands and she ran up from in front of me so hard that she knocked me off my feet and everything went flying. I had to fall over her and so it happened in ultra slow motion with kibble and hay dust flying everywhere. Being single is sad when there’s no one to hug you and you have to clean up after your spill all by yourself. In this case all the dogs and the pig tried to help clean the mess which only added to the morning pandemonium.
I had a really full week. Every night there was something going on and now it’s the weekend and the boys want to hit the farmer’s market so we’ll do that. As crazy as things are with these two, food is a uniting endeavor we can all enjoy. I have to go into work and deal with piles of charting and I have my animals to attend and music to work on.
I also joined 24 Hour Fitness several weeks ago and after a good first few days have not gone back. Maybe I’ll get to that too. Paws crossed.
That’s me and all the reasons why I haven’t written.
I’ll try and do better but will forgive myself if I don’t because that’s the way life works.
Namaste.
Fuzzy Monkey 