I awoke feeling tired and realized I’d gotten about six hours of sleep. Wasn’t real concerned as that’s been my norm for years. But I usually don’t feel tired, and I wondered if it had to do with aging, as I’m now sniffing on the border of being 68. So I thought, yes, this is probably the case.
When I went into the office, cranked up the ‘puter and turned to the NYTimes this morning after breakfast, the first story spotted was, “Why Does Sleep Become More Elusive As We Age” in Salon. I don’t think sleep is my issue per se, but rest. Still, it made me feel like they were spying on my private thoughts.
I wouldn’t be surprised if another story emerges soon, “Why Do We Get More Paranoid About Being Spied On When We Age” soon.
I’ve learned to accept my older self. I’m no longer slender or muscular with thick, shiny hair, striding through places like I might be someone famous. Now I’m graying, thinning, bloated. Sagging and wrinkling skin mark the progress of decades of being.
But I’ve learned that if I don’t look in a mirror, I’ll be alright. Makes shaving my face a serious challenge, though.
Good afternoon. Getting around a little late to this posting today. I dibble and dabbled the morning away, dashing up and down the Interstate and around town during late morning and early afternoon before returning home for naps and reading for a few hours.
It’s November 11, 2023, Saturday and Veteran’s Day. Awoke to a new battle between a feeble sun trying to crawl through chilly gray fog to reach us. Finally worked after a few hours, lifting us from about forty up to a skin scorching 55 F. Bazinga.
As we went zipped about town today, we had lunch and then began joking about our energy levels. “We used to be younger,” my wife and I teased one another. Yes, we used to be crazy, and we used to be fun. Now we’re prudent from mistakes made and lessons learned. Well, with happenstance, we turned off NPR games to pop on the car’s FM radio, and there was Miley Cyrus, repeating our words back at us.
We laughed and my spouse mentioned how much she enjoys the Miley Cyrus song, “Used To Be Crazy”, which came out earlier in 2023. And then I started wondering, when exactly did we start talking about when we were young? I think it was when I was in my forties, which is now about twenty years ago, depending on where the marker in my forties is thrown down, but I can’t verify it without a time machine. But how often do we mourn the passage of our youth and the new people which we end up being? We reflect on how our metabolism drops lower and lower, and with it often goes our energy levels, and maybe our attention levels. I also mourn hair loss and how many body shape has change, and oh, yeah, that hair has grayed and thinned. Were wrinkles mentioned? I forget.
I won’t say that I’ll never be the person I used to be. Techology may surprise us in new ways, like cloning a new version of Michael that I can inhabit with life memories and acquired knowledge intact, which could be pretty cool. Or perhaps an invention that comes along which washes out old cells and blows us out clean and fresh once again, even tailoring the result into which age we’ll like to be. I think I’d like to be 32 again.
Oh, well. This is the shit that is us, and such is life.
Stay positive, be strong and brave, and keep leaning forward. This concludes this portion of my posting day. Here’s the video. Cheers
She hadn’t seen the friend in a while. They have a regular gang that meet for coffee at Growlers after exercises classes each M-W-F morning.
Converted from an old gas station, Growlers, nominally a purveyor of beers, is in downtown Ashland. It actually shares its space with a small coffee shop. It’s normally not busy in the morning. That allows the coffee gang to pull together tables and make noise as they please. Outdoor seating with firepits is available, and that’s where they’ll typically be.
The gang is a flexible group with active lives, so the group meeting ranges from four to fifteen people. They’re mostly women. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers, retired teachers, programmers, nurses, musicians, accountants, architects, artists, firefighters, college professors, and so on. They’re characters, and have been coming to the same exercise class, with the same instructor, Mary, for over thirty years. My wife, in her mid-sixties, is the youngest. She started the coffee gant back when she began taking the class after we moved here in 2006. Always pursuing fitness, when she arrived here, she began looking for a new exercise routine, and heard about Mary’s Y class. That’s where she was told this tale this morning.
Weirdly, my wife doesn’t like the coffee at Growler’s, so she has tea.
“We’ve downsized,” L said. L is the friend. “I’m 76 and my husband is 82. We had a 3,000 foot home and five and half acres just outside of Ashland. We were talking and agreed, we don’t need all this property. So we sold our place and bought a smaller one here in town.
“Well, after we’d sold our property, the new owners called us. They wondered if we could meet at our old house and walk the property line with them so they can learn about their new land. Naturally, we agreed, so a time and place was set.
“We’d never met them. Well, we got out of the car to wait, and then they arrived. Well, they were older than us! Both had walkers.
“Then they told us, they were downsizing, too. We were speechless.”
I laughed when I was told the story and wondered, moving into a 3000 square foot home with some land while downsizing, just how big was their last place?
Good day. It’s Friday, September 29, 2023. We’re on the precipice of October in Ashlandia, where the music is crisp and fresh.
It’s 54 now, with a solidly overcast sky, one that looks like off-white paint was spilled all over it. The high will be 64 F. It’s not supposed to rain, but it might. Rain is just like floofs, always doing things which it’s not supposed to do.
BoBtoberfest is in the air. The BoBs are my beer buddies. I’ve been meeting with them for over a dozen years. ‘BoB’ means ‘Brains on Beer’, as it was founded by retired engineers, doctors, and professors. We meet once per week, on Wednesday. Once seated, we catch up on our lives, politics, science, news, and the arts. Two hours later, we head back home. Part of our current structure is donations to local schools for STEAM projects. We’re always looking for new ones, and we prefer to help troubled programs and at-risk students.
Octoberfest is the famous celebration in Munich. We were talking about it a few years ago and decided that having our own Octoberfest would be fun. We had to personalize the name to avoid confusing others; they might think that our Ashlandia Octoberfest might be mis-identified as the real one, right? Sure. So we named our gathering BoBtoberfest. Aren’t we clever?
BoBtoberfest is going to be at Mouse X’s house this year. His house was burned down several years ago. His entire neighborhood was destroyed. So was most of his town, along with a large part of two other small towns. While recovering, he rented a house in our town. One of the othe BoBs got to know him and invited him to our meetings. He’s a biologist and botanist, retiring from BLM service just before his house was destroyed.
His house was finally rebuilt last year. He wants to show it off, so he’s hosting BoBtoberfest this year. Coming later in the month, he’s grilling salmon and we’re all bringing food and drink.
Next weekend is another BoBabration. One of our members, Julie, is celebrating her 70th. She’s a retired botanist who moved into town a few years ago. Her sons live in Sacramento and Portland. They wanted to throw her a birthday party; she agreed only if the BoBs were invited. We’re not required to donate anything for this fete. Red pandas mesmerize her, so we’ve bought a stuffed red panda as a gift.
Now, to music. I have “Changes” by Black Sabbath in my mental morning music stream (Trademark reluctant). The Neurons put it there after they overheard a convo between me and my wife. They’re like Alexa and Siri in that regard, always eavesdropping.
My wife and were talking about aging and its impacts, laughing about the changes. Next thing I know, I hear Ozzie singing “I’m going through changes” from the Black Sabbath album, Vol. IV, which was released in 1972.
Stay positive and be strong. Loaded with a cuppa java, I’m ready to stagger out into the world. Here’s the music. Cheers
He told his friends, “With all the recent smoke, I’ve added some things to my morning routine. Now I spray each nostril with saline spray, and then put eye drops in. I can’t help myself from thinking when I do, is this the smoke, or getting old, or functions and tissue breaking down?”
First you must learn how the human body works in general, and what’s expected of it. Then you learn what your body can do, and its exceptions and variations. Then you’re often forced to understand how the body of those you love and support works differently. Few of us have a body that doesn’t come with quirks that split us away from being ‘average’, which becomes specially true as you age, because it changes again. What you could once do or eat is suddenly — and sometimes, dramatically — different.
Most of us view ourselves as younger than we are. Just a trick of psychology. I can see, then, how disturbing using a cane or walker because you’re now elderly and need it can severely disrupt your self-image.
It’s amazing. When he was a kid, he usually had two pairs of shoes, known as his ‘good’ shoes and his play shoes. Good shoes were also known as ‘dress-up’ shoes and ‘nice’ shoes. Play shoes became gym shoes and good shoes became school shoes. Dress shoes were added into the mix.
This trio — gym, or ‘tennis’ shoes, as they grew to be called — school shoes, dress shoes — were the status quo for years. A second pair of school shoes was added, along with cleated shoes for sports.
During his military years, he stayed with the triumvirate of shoes for his personal life. Gym shoes were still tennis shoes (though he didn’t play tennis), along with dress shoes and ‘jeans’ shoes. He began playing racquetball, so racquetball shoes were added to the mix. So were sandals. Then running shoes joined the shoe group. Military requirements dictated three more pairs of shoes: low-quarters (which were a super-shiny version of dress shoes), chukka boots, and combat (or paratrooper) boots. So it mostly stayed for his military career, except slippers were added through Christmas presents, and jungle boots and desert boots were added to fit his mission needs. The three pairs of military footwear were now five, because they’d done away with the chukkas.
Civilian life post military retirement brought on more shoe requirements. Aging helped. And shoe marketing. Now he added beach shoes, boating shoes, hiking shoes, walking shoes, and several pairs of ‘jeans’ shoes, also now called ‘casual’ shoes. There were work shoes, so he looked the role in the ‘business casual’ environment, but the military shoes were gone.
Going into marketing added more shoes to go with suits. Brown, gray, and black shoes were needed. He still had running and hiking shoes, along with walking shoes, jeans shoes, and casual work shoes. He was wearing cargo shorts frequently, and needed shoes to go with those. Moving from a pleasant year round clime to a snowy and wet environment brought up needs for wet weather and cold weather shoes.
Now he’s come to retirement. The suit shoes sit in boxes on shelves, but the rest have become so complex and numerous. He purged his shoes regularly, giving them away. His feet had widened and his feet’s needs had changed through the years, and that dictated changes as well.
Like so many other things, it’d become so very, very complicated. He wished for the days again when he had just two pairs of shoes. Given how life goes, he figured that circle would complete itself when he grew older.
Michael Seidel, writer 