Sunday, September 18, 2011

Maintenance

Suddenly I'm in the maintenance business.  Well, okay, it wasn't so sudden, it was more like a gradual change.
The thing is, as you age, your cat ages, your car breaks down, your roof leaks, your teeth break, the house is crumbling around you and you can never get a hot shower when you need one, and spiders, if you allow them, will spin the whole shebang into one shimmering stretchy bundle, if you did not walk face first into it on the way out of the house every day, and spend the next half hour pulling webs out of your hair.Which basically sums up my mornings.

I know I have aged when I start advising young women to pay attention; that they look as good as they ever will despite what they believe and that it will not last forever.

Suddenly under the barrage of pills I must gulp down on an hourly basis, I have to eat less and move more.  When we were young, we were moving so fast we had to be slowed down, and now, we forget that we danced half the day away, and after that, walked to almost everywhere we had to go.  Particularly in the city, one can walk two miles just getting to work and back.  And in those days I did it in high heels.

I don't know if you noticed when you stopped wearing heels.  Oprah still wears them, you think, so why don't I?  All the makeovers on TV take dowdy home makers and put them in makeup and heels.  That would fix at least 75% of everyone's problems.   On the other hand, Oprah is taking her shoes off even on camera.  If that does not tell you something, then it at least should be pointed out to her.  "Oprah, put your damn shoes on girl, you on camera!" (taking a lot of license here, but Gail might say it like that.)

Have you looked at the skin on your legs and arms lately?  I advise that you don't, it will just make you cry.
Just sit in a bath of any kind of emollient, I don't care, milk, Aveeno, any oil in the house except motor, (but not too smelly, as it may repel people), and hope to be magically restored before you look.

Of late, my skin has taken on the look of wrinkled, hairy silk, or the traditional (and there's a reason they say it) paper.  This makes me sad.  I sit in bed slathering moisture lotion all over anyplace I can reach and hoping to hell that I do not slide out of bed or have to wash the sheets.  (more maintenance.)

I believe that women do most of the work in this world, and then have to work on themselves.
A couple weeks ago, one of my sheets tore and since then I am on a crusade to find something to replace them.  I do not want mushy sheets.  I want nice, crisp percale like they used to make.  They were just a bit heavier than now, and it did not take 3 years, and that is not hyperbole, to get the sticky little surface stuff to lie down.  I have amassed a compendium of complaints.  And that's what happens as you age.

You have little patience with incompetence, and you want everything you like to be manufactured perfectly, and forever. Do not get me started on toaster ovens! And you have to pay so much more attention to a corpse which no matter how much attention you show will never look as good as it did when you were 20, with the possible exception of women on TV who have paid crowds of people to do the work for them.

Do not be completely dismayed, however.  There are plenty of worse problems in the world, and if one can be solved with body lotion, well, it's a cheap fix.  The rest is another story, and you will get through it.
I have to remind myself, no matter how bad it is, and you do not want to know what else is going on here, it could be worse.  In the meantime, you are in the maintenance business with me.














Thursday, September 08, 2011

Nuts to you

I found a walnut in the mail box today.  It's really just an open container, but still, I think the mailman did it, it was too heavy for a squirrel to carry, and it was still in its green husk.

In other news, I had to chase Squirly Mon (his name) out of the concrete urn.  He was reluctant to go because he was burying another damn peanut.  I don't know who gives the squirrels peanuts in the shell, and for sure, they are not growing in the yard.  For one thing, everything that grows in my yard now gets stolen before it reaches maturity, and for another, peanuts grow underground.