How it’s happening it at our house, (nothing to brag about)

Apparently, if we’ve survived until now, we are supposed to joyfully embrace our age.  Everyone says so. But it happened so suddenly I didn’t see it coming and I wasn’t exactly prepared. In fact, I probably didn’t think any of those maxims applied to me; aging simply wasn’t on my radar screen.

So I looked in the mirror. Then I looked in the closet.  Clear evidence was displayed there in the evolution of my accumulated footwear collection.  Unquestionably, I am aging.

There are other such indictions, too; strangers calling me “sweetie” or even “dearie”.  And there was that appalling incident in New York when I boarded a city bus.  The places reserved for the Infirm and elerly were occupied by the infirm and the elderly.  To my horror, one of them got up and offered me a seat!

Now aging can be a good thing; everyone is doing it (apparently it starts at birth) but we all do it differently.  I know people who are playing tennis and running marathons in their 70s amd 80s even skiiing in their 90s, while others (of us) are dealing with the whole thing quite dfifferently and with difficulty.  I assuredly not among that first group but I do knnow that exercise of some kind is essential. Everyone says so.  I used to go to  Sports West Gym at 5 AM every morning. I did that for years. I stopped. There were very valid reasons for stopping but the resulting body was not very impressive because…

“I want to get old gracfully. I want to have good posture.

I want to be healthy and be an example to my garandchidlren.”

…and it isn’ happening. So I decided to convert one of our bedrooms into an exercise room and transform myself there.  I donated some furniture in order to open up floor space, filling that floor space with mats, weights and an vast arrray of equipment, to include balance balls, and boards and steps, even a walking pad.  The comprter sits on the desk with a lot of Youtube exercise videos for me to follow.  It ‘s very impressive.  All I have to do is (1).go upstairs, (2) go into that room, (3) turn on one of the videos (4) actually exercise one way or another.  Now that I think about it, perhaps item (1) should be deciding to do all of that.

Meanwhile, while waiting for that motivation to kick in, I enjoy the humorous messages sshared by friends. Here are some of my favorites, they make me laugh, which hopefully is some form of exercise? Perhaps they will make you laugh, too.

‘You know how important exercise is, as we grow older. Here are a few suggestions. I start by standing outside behind the house and, with a five-pound potato sack in each hand, extend my arms straight out to my sides and hold them there as long as I can.  After a few weeks, I moved up to 10-pound potato sacks, td dtsp,hen 50-pound potato sacks and finally I got to where I could lift a 100-pound potato sack in each hand and hold my arms straight out for more than a full minute!  Next, I started putting a few potatoes IN the sacks, but would caution about overdoing it at this level.”

“I’ve reached an age where my favorite social event is canceling plans.”

“As you get older; you’ve probably noticed that you tend to forget things. You’ll be talking with somebody at a party, and you’ll know that you know this person, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t remember his or her name. This can be very embarrassing,   especially if he or she turns out to be your spouse.”   

“At this age, I consider naps a competitive sport.”

“I walked into a room and forgowhy. So I walked out and back in to see if it would jog my memory. Now I live there.”

“Nap time is now a reward, not a punishment.”

You spent 90% of your adult life, hoping for a long rest and the last 10% trying to convince the Lord that you’re not actually that tired.