Signs That You Are Getting Older

 There are times when I realize 40 is definitely not the new 20.  Now by no means do I see myself as an old maid, nor do I hear the grim reaper calling my name, but I have to confess there are some parts of getting older that make me want to yell “can somebody please get me some Prozac because I think this is making me depressed!”.The good news is that those are usually very brief thoughts since my memory seems to be going.  Yesterday, one of the kids was disrespectful to me and it took five tries to call her by the right name.  By the time I finally got it out all of the kids at the table were so confused thinking they were the one in trouble.My aunt says that she uses a book with brain games in it to keep her mind sharp.  That would be a great idea except that my 20/20 vision seems to be a thing of the past.  Over the past year I have noticed that when I look at my phone to see who it is calling I am holding it further and further away.  I finally caved in and bought a pair of drug store glasses.   I had no idea how blurry things had been until I put them on and was amazed how easy it was to see everything!  That was, until I made the mistake of glancing in the mirror when I had them on and I actually got a clear glimpse of my body for the first time in years.  This morning those glasses were conveniently under my right rear tire when I backed out of the driveway.  And speaking of phones, if you have a teenager you probably know that in order to communicate you have to learn the art of texting.  I mean seriously, what do all of those abbreviations mean?  My daughter sends messages that always end with “Ily”.  It always baffled me why she did that.  One day I asked if that was her code for me so she wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of her friends that she was texting her mom?  She laughed and said it meant “I love you”.Since I can’t see what I am texting I asked my daughter to text something for me.  In doing so, she changed the settings on my phone so that whenever I start to type in a word, the phone tries to outsmart me and guess the word all on its own.  It is like being married to a man who tries to finish my sentences and gets it wrong.  I start to type in “t-h-a”….and it pulls up (they, there, that) when all I wanted to say was “Thanks”.  My phone is being impatient because I am older and slower.  Why can’t it just let me type in a word at my own pace?The one undeniable truth about getting older is that my metabolism has begun to slow down.  Why is it that we can’t retire from our jobs until we are in our mid 60’s, but our metabolism can retire before it has even put in a good 40 years.  I have earned the right to sit on the couch and eat a pint of ice cream and without it going directly to my thighs.  But who am I kidding?  I can’t eat ice cream anyways.  The older I get I swear I am becoming lactose intolerant. The other day I went to lick the dripping ice cream off of my Finn’s ice cream cone and I had a mental discussion with myself to not eat too much or I will be bloated all night.  When did I become  my grandmother?I still dream of being a size in the single digits.  But the older I get the more I realize that I can slowly lose some weight but my body seems to have lost all of its elasticity.  Suddenly gravity has taken a firm grip and everything on my body is being pulled south.  I would get some kind of a lift but I do seem to be able to convince my health insurance company that all of the things that are sagging could be a fall hazard.  I look at my teenagers and wonder: Did I ever sleep this much?  The older I get, the less sleep I need.  Every morning like clock work my body wakes up before sunrise, and by afternoon I am dreaming about taking a little snooze.  I actually fell asleep the other night at 7:45 pm and drooled, only to wake up at 9:00 pm and feel rested and ready for the day. .  
Whoever gave the advice to grow old gracefully must have been in there 20’s and had not yet started the aging process.  But there is a beautiful part of aging, one that I wish I could teach my children right now.  Like learning to embrace where you are in life right now and learning to laugh out loud, even when it is at yourself.  It makes all the saggy, blurry, lactose intolerant parts of life worth living.