Secret of Aging #1: Stiff Back

Here I share with you the secrets and wisdom of aging gracefully. No! No! Make it stop! I won't go!!!! Yes, gracefully.

The reason your back stiffens as you age. . .

It becomes harder and harder to get a full glimpse of your ever-expanding and/or sagging ass in the mirror. You see, it is a psychological defense mechanism. The less you can see, the more you can convince yourself it is still the same size and shape it once was thus protecting your delicate aging psyche from the truth.

If you are lucky, by the time you have a true old-lady's bottom -- wrinkled, drooping and held into place by giant panties -- the combination of stiff back, poor eyesight and the onset of dementia will allow you to enter your golden years convinced that your ass is still as firm and round as it was when you were sixteen.

What you can't see, can't hurt you.

Chili Nuts

My husband has a ritual. When watching a soccer match on television, he likes to have a glass of beer and something salty to munch on, for example, chili nuts.

Not so long ago, the all-important, the-world-will-implode-if-you-don't-see-it European Champion's League final was on tv, and the kids got to see a little bit of the game and have their first taste of chili nuts. Bonding over sports, a bizarre ritual, if you ask me, but the kids enjoyed it.

So the other day, Laney and I were doing some grocery shopping. While I pushed the big cart around and loaded it with boring food items, she pushed her mini shopping cart around and loaded it with healthfood, i.e.-sugary cereal, strawberry milk, and chili nuts for daddy. When we got home, she proudly showed him what she had bought for him.

Fast-forward to that evening -- as Laney was getting ready for bed, she asked her father, "Aren't we going to go downstairs and watch soccer and eat chili nuts?"

Wow!

Thanks everyone for the kind comments on the last post! So it really isn't just my mom, my friend Lin, and my husband's nephew's wife who look at this page regularly.

I was truly touched.

And inspired.

To write!

And to be fair to "Crackbook" as Kim called it, much of my recent time away has been thanks to out-of-town visitors and spring cleaning.

I am telling you now that if anyone in this house develops a dust allergy, it will be the end of us all. The one with the allergy would probably die of a fatal allergic reaction (there IS that much dust around here), and I would succumb to a heart attack in trying to chase the tiny particles away.

As an aside, another "benefit" of being short is that many dust-collecting surfaces are above eye-level. I forget how the dust is piling up on those surfaces until I go into one of my frantic must-dust-everything-within-reach-or-I-will-die modes, then am horrified by the amount of dust I have been allowing my children to breathe in. Oh, well. Out of sight, out of mind, I say.

Thanks again to everyone for all of the great comments!