Why is it if you read at bedtime you fall asleep but if you write at bedtime you lie awake for hours and wind up laying on the couch with infomercials droning in the background while your heart bangs in your chest and you think you're going to have a heart attack?
I even went to the bathroom and ate a tasty child-sized aspirin to stave off the afore-mentioned attack.
They are so choice. Remember when they came in tiny little glass bottles with cute pink and baby blue labels? My mom had to hide them because we gobbled 'em up like they were orange M&Ms. No, of course you don't remember – you're not old enough to remember.
Age.
It's got me in a death grip.
The story I wrote last night was about getting old. AGAIN. I read it to Dave this morning and he was, like, "it sure sounds like you," even though it's for the April Fool's Blogswap and it's supposed to be in someone else's voice. I can't help it. I'm death-obsessed. I turned 50 and suddenly realized the world isn't my oyster... well, it IS my oyster: a small container with a lid like a coffin that you have to pry open with a shucker-thing because once the lid is down, it's DOWN, baby.
These things have occurred to me:
1. I may not live long enough to finish paying the mortgage. (Woo hoo! Way to get out of the mortgage!)
2. Despite those cultures that respect old people as being wise, my culture does no such thing. Old people are largely ignored because young people know everything and even though you DO know something, young people ignore it because you're, you know, old.
3. I have to do something to improve my physical self because everything hurts. Arthritis sucks. Bad knees suck. My memory sucks. Hot flashes suck. And how is it that I can have wrinkles and pimples at the same damn time? And all of them with black hairs sticking out of them? *looking for my tweezers* I want to lose weight and am thinking of Weight Watchers but I don't want to know how much I weigh. I mean, I know it's a lot because my ass has its own time zone, but I don't want to know the number because it will send me spiralling down into a "I hate me" depression. Yes, yes, I realize that the number-shock is part of what drives initial success in weight loss but I don't like the shock. It scares me. Maybe I'll sign up if they promise to keep that bad number to themselves and not tell me until I'm 50 pounds away from it.
In the next couple of months I have a battery of health appointments. Dentist. Internist (check-up with lecture about weight). Family doctor for a physical (read: pap smear and lecture about weight). Eye doctor because I swear I'm on the verge of cataracts. Have you ever noticed how people who have had cataract surgery have weird silver glints in their eyes? I saw Ali McGraw on Oprah and she had that weird glint. It's like Stepford Wives or alien abductions.
I also have MY FIRST MAMMOGRAM.
You have to be 50 to get a mammogram around here, unless you have a history of breast cancer or lumpy breasts or you're a hypochondriac or you just like having your boobs squished. This whole mammogram thing intrigues me. Someone told me I could get some fancy new laser mammogram that doesn't squish your boobs but I think I want the squisher. I think of it as a rite of passage, like circumcision, only it's for boobs.
Speaking of boobs, must go to work.
Gonna hang with a bunch of young people. People who know nothing about boob squishing or hot flashes or that evil glint in Ali McGraw's eye. Frankly, they probably don't even know who Ali McGraw is. Last week I said something about James Taylor and half of them DIDN'T KNOW WHO JAMES TAYLOR WAS.
See what I have to deal with?

James Taylor and Carole King