Those 70ish Girls

I’m finding that being 70ish is a whole new ballgame and I can’t say that I like all that is happening. A lot of things seem to be changing rather suddenly. If you call people below 70 thin-skinned, it means they can’t take a jab. Everything less than a full-fledged compliment bothers them. If you’re in your 70s your skin is so thin that if anything more substantial than a feather touches it, your thin skin turns black and blue. At least mine does.

One of my children (50ish) called at 4:30 the other day and asked if she was interrupting dinner. It pained me to admit that she was. Dinner used to be at 7:00. We can’t do that now. It would interfere with our before bedtime nap.

Actually, the older I get the less I sleep. If this continues, it could become a real problem. When I can’t sleep, I eat everything that isn’t moving. I can’t make a noise in the kitchen without our dog, Riley, jumping down from the bed and trotting down the hall to see what snack we will be sharing. He has a look that says, “If you don’t share, I’ll bark and wake the big guy up.”

My husband. Kip, tells everyone that he gets up at 5:30 every morning. What he doesn’t say is that he eats breakfast and then takes a 45 minute nap. He goes to bed at 9:00. I go to bed at midnight or after, and get up at 4:30. I wait a while to eat breakfast because it has only been a few hours since Riley and I had our last snack.

My mother once said that she lied about her age so much, her kids finally got older than she was. Thank goodness my kids are aging well. My youngest is turning 45 this year. How did that happen? He’s old enough to be my doctor. Doctors are supposed to be older than their patients. Last time I went to the dentist, he said I needed a crown. I told him I had several, but I thought it might be inappropriate to wear one to the dentist office. Of course he didn’t get my humor. He said that if I were his grandmother, he would file the tooth off, put some filling in it, and call it good. His grandmother probably wears dentures. I still have all of my teeth. I got the $1043 crown which now that I think about it, was probably the reaction he was hoping for. My mind is no longer as sharp as a tack. It’s as dull as a butter knife.

There are plusses to aging. The obvious one is if you wake up and look down at your toes and there is no toe tag, it means you get to enjoy another day. You laugh even when the joke is on you…especially when the joke is on you. You don’t have to prove yourself unless you want to. You have plenty of time to do things like, deciding to buy a motor home, sell the old one and while you’re at it, sell your house and everything in it… and the oversized garage and the cute little cottage that housed your most precious mementoes given to you by precious friends and relatives. I’m not selling them. I am taking them with me. I will store them in one of the storage compartments. Kip won’t need them all, right? I’ll get them out occasionally and play with the Beasterhops while drinking tea from my beautiful teacups.

It will be good. It isn’t right now. I spent the morning shoveling little rocks from a huge bag while my neighbor ladies and their husbands played a fun game of pickle. (I think that’s what you call it.) I am still helping out with the kid’s program at the library. Next week I’m teaching the art class. I can hear you laughing. We are making a beach scene out of a paper plate, colored pencils, glue, sparkles, little seashells, and other decorations. We will attach twine to it and it will be ready to hang up at home. I have 3 hanging on my walls in the newer motor home.

Life is good and it’s about to get better. I’ll let you know when we have the garage sale. It promises to be quite an event.

A lot to think about, huh? And I’m only seventy and a half.