Signs You're Getting Older

Signing up on a new website last week, I realized some time may have elapsed when I had to scroll for 5 to 10 seconds to find my year of birth!
Not only that, our Labrador's name is Tessie III. and the autopsy on the last 2 stated "death by natural causes". I also open my mouth periodically and my Mother's voice comes out. But that's OK, my Mum was awesome and I want to be just like she was.

I babysat for a young friend of ours last week, and ever since then I have noticed a weird internal ticking noise. Since I had a series of physical exams recently and no pacemaker was detected, I tend to lean toward the clucky hen factor instead of an impending Angina episode. This reappearing maternal twitch is a little disturbing when my mailbox is constantly full of AARP invitations and monthly newsletters for bionic hearing devices and assorted geriatric ambulation devices.

It's these little incidentals that remind me of my age. Mind you, I'm only 43 and I'd much rather be here than 23. I knew so much at that age I almost destroyed myself. I sincerely believe that with age, does come wisdom, albeit not Buddha status, but I do believe calm leads to intelligence so I must surely be well on the way to becoming a genius of monumental importance. I no longer have the urge get everything done yesterday. And the thought of going to a nightclub with friends has been mysteriously replaced by wanting to check a good book out of the library and sit on the river bank with a picnic and a fishing pole.

When I was 23, I was a proper young Mrs Goody Know It All. But, I was no more interested in going back to school, writing, or discovering beautiful classical music than I was shaving my head and piercing something where it can't be seen by the general public. Nor would I have thought I would travel so much after 35 years of age either, after all, who needed to be in a strange country where everything is unfamiliar, having the best adventure of my life when I already had a complete life of mediocrity right in my own backyard?

Generally it is the younger folks who fill a backpack with nothing of any use except a favorite pair of holey jeans and a portable cd/dvd player and jet off to the ends of the earth in search of....well, to "check it out". I was never one to do things of any adventurous nature just thinking back a little. After a bad car wreck many years ago I spent a long time recovering physically only to find that I had rarely left my own home except to attempt grocery shopping, and that was an event fit for a whole separate article on Helium.

I have no regrets whatsoever, people tend too have many of those. I am smarter and better , not older, I am fluffy, not fat...and who needs another new little home with a jumbo mortgage to match anyway?
Anyway as far as those regrets go; it took 10,000 attempts and a very long time to make a light bulb work correctly. In contrast,when I was just 23 all it took me and my worldly intellect was 2 years to ruin 1 marriage, 2 cars, and get one foreclosure under my belt.

Yes, I am almost a genius.
Roll on 44!