How You Know You are Getting OLD

An easy way to determine this is to simply look at your next birthday fast approaching. If you're like me, you no longer cherish you birthday. Or I should say, in the first moment you think on your birthday you experience a certain warmth, followed by an almost immediate bittersweet wave of angst. Another year bites the dust.  And yes, you were alive, kicking, and attempting to listen to it in reverse when that classic song hit number 1 on Casey Kasem's American Top 40. Am I right?

Yep. You're old.

There are other ways to determine you are getting on in years--a few uplifting, but mostly extremely depressing. Recently Alina and I, over cups of hot coffee and scrambled eggs, discussed qualities that manifest as one ages, and came up with a list to share with you. Here it is. I'm sure you could add a few good ones to this list. Please feel free to do so in your comments.

How You Know You are Getting Really Old

 1. After a morning swim you look in the mirror and witness goggle marks so deep you know you will spend the day explaining that NO, you are not extremely tired or sick. You just have permanent indentations in your eyeball sockets from wearing goggles. And no, you don't wear them too tightly. It's just because you are OLD.

2. You look in the mirror and notice that you are growing sideburns, and you are a woman.

3. You constantly are on the verge of throwing out your back. Or you neck. Or your knee. And then you must discuss this fact ad nauseum with anyone who will listen--most likely another old person who knows what you are going through and can compete and compare with his own old people ailments.

4.While sitting in a work meeting your brush your hand to your chin and feel a CHIN hair. You begin to panic. Is it long? Is it black? You notice yourself covering your chin with your hand and excusing yourself to go to the lavatory so you can pluck that mother out. right. now. Yep, getting old.

5. You begin to think that drinking Metamucil on a daily basis is actually a very good idea.

6. You carry a really tacky dog purse.
Exhibit A.

(This was Alina's, naturally, in reference to my lovely purse choice of recent months.)
More accurately, you no longer give a rip if someone--anyone--thinks you're a tool for carrying the bag you carry, the shoes you wear, the brand of your jeans you have on etc and so on. In fact, you relish carrying a tacky dog purse because you spent so many years caring way too much about that stupid fashion stuff.


7. You find yourself buying ridiculously expensive facial creams and half believing that they will make you look younger if you just stick to the "regime" described by the skin "clinician".

8. You develop bunions. And they are really ugly. And they make it hurt to wear funky cowboy boots or sexy heels, or really any attractive, made for a young-person-without-bunions type shoe. So you wear slippers or clogs. And that's it. Even at work.

9. You find a white pubic hair.

10. You knick yourself shaving and it takes three weeks to heal.

11. You appear to be developing elephant knees.

12. You go into a room, wonder why you are there, leave the room, remember what you needed, return to the room, forget why you are there. And so on.

13. You continually find skin tags in odd places like in your arm pit or by your left ear.

14. Staying up late means you are up past 10 p.m. on a weekend night.

15. You fall sound asleep at 9 pm. and awake at 2:30 a.m. You don't fall asleep again until 5:30 a.m. Fifteen minutes later your alarm goes off and it it's time to start the day.

16. You drive a minivan. And your second car is a Prius.

17. You worry those night sweats you are having are the first stage of menopause and not just because your husband throws the covers off himself and onto you in the middle of the night.

18. Going out for drinks with the girls actually means meeting them at 6:30 pm on a Tuesday evening at a local restaurant in the burbs, having one glass of wine and dinner, and returning home  by 9:00 p.m.

19. You look at your hands and think, Wow. Those are old people hands.

20. You thank those who card you profusely, and say things like, Oh, You don't have to do that. So thoughtful... And you find yourself frequenting the establishment just in the hopes that said carding will happen again.

21. Everything you remember from your high school and college days is now considered "retro".

22. You have forsaken plucking out white hairs in favor of just dying your whole damn head. Enough already. The white has won.
++++++++++++++++++++
Okay. Enough of that.
Here is my training update:
I have been training.
Some days I feel uber confident. Somedays I feel like I should just throw in the towel, get fat, and can this IM stuff.
But I keep trucking along, hoping I will see the IM result on 7/22 that I so desperately want and have worked for these last few years. 
Old lady or not.