Bumper Sticker of the Day

Some of you will know exactly  what this means.  For the rest of you, just wait.

Bumper Sticker of the Day

Daaaang, this is happening to me more than I want to admit!

Bumper Sticker of the Day

I had lunch with a friend over the weekend and we were discussing how we aren’t able to bring the same enthusiasm to the table any longer.  I miss my 30s!

Bumper Sticker of the Day

Maybe it depends on your definition of young!

Bumper Sticker of the Day

I think life begins at birth so you better enjoy it while you can!

Cat In The Hat (Revised)

As some of you know I’ve spent part of my life as a children’s librarian.  I laughed when I saw this back over the summer and it was instrumental in what I decided to name this blog.

Getting Older

(click on comic to view larger image)

I saw this cartoon in last week’s newspaper and decided to share it.  I liked it because of the references to children’s books – the “Old Mother Hubbard” nursery rhyme and “There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.”

But beyond those references it got me thinking about the aging process and how I feel about it.  I hear many women profess this to be the best time of their lives.  Unfortunately, that’s not the case for me.

The reasons I’ve heard most often are that once their children are grown, they have time for themselves, and something about knowing themselves better.  Perhaps the two go hand in hand since childrearing can be all consuming for many years.

I don’t have children so my 20s and 30s were much different.  During this time we bought a sailboat and taught ourselves to sail, I went to college and earned 2 degrees, we lived in 4 different states and traveled a great deal.  I was fit and healthy and filled with the thought that anything and everything was possible.  I didn’t worry about finances because we always lived beneath our means and because we rented it was easy to go where the jobs were.  More than once we sold everything and moved to another part of the country without a place to live, a job, or sometimes both.  I thrived on the unknown and discovering new friends and natural wonders.

Now in my fifties, for the first time in my life, I feel constraint and loss of opportunity at every turn.  We own our house free and clear, but rather than feeling comforted by that, I feel we must stay here rather than give up that safety in order to find better employment opportunities.  I no longer believe that my degrees from some of the best schools in California mean anything or that they would help me obtain a decent job.  So giving up this small bit of security feels foolish.  Yet my ability to find interesting work is severely limited – I’m either overqualified or don’t have specific enough experience.  So many other people are looking for jobs that every advertised position garners hundreds of applications.

I’ll be starting a new job on Monday, managing a website that collects and analyzes county-specific data.  I am a one-person department who will rely heavily on volunteers (ugh).  The benefits and pay are pitiful, between a third and one half of my previous position.  But it is a job and the commute is under 20 miles one way.  Considering the large sums of money I’ve lost in the last 18 months, I’ll probably have to work until it’s no longer possible. 

So no, I’m not enjoying this stage of my life at all!

What? I said what?!

Like most aging people my hearing isn’t what it used to be and I miss it.  I flew to Chicago a couple of months ago to visit friends and was browsing through the inane and worthless Skymall catalog.  I’ve always thought this thing was packed with stuff no one really needed.

Lo and behold, there amongst the other technological wonders was a hearing aid disguised to look like a Blue Tooth headset! 

Would you?

What? Speak Up, I Can’t Hear You

One of the joys of getting older is that you can’t hear shit any more.  I didn’t go to that many concerts in the 60s and 70s and IPods hadn’t been invented yet, although I do have one and use it whenever I travel to drown out screaming kids.  Still, I find I can’t hear anything Mr. GYMA says when the dishwasher is running or I’m running water in the sink, etc.  Does this happen to you, too?  I’ve also noticed that we have to crank up the sound when we watch our Netflix choices, particularly if there’s lots of dialog.  Oh, one more thing.  I love whenever I have to call our health care provider long distance using their toll-free number.  It seems the sound is virtually nonexistent on these calls so I can barely hear what the twit on the other end is saying when I call to complain about being overcharged for something (which is about 50% of the time).

I’ve been watching the hearing aid technology but so far nothing looks promising and cheap enough to encourage us to dive in.  Mr. GYMA is particularly bad, so when the neighbor speaks to him he just walks away appearing to be a complete jerk.  When I tell him this he’s like all “what?  you know I can’t hear anything.”