From the Heating Pad

Recounting the unfortunate events of last Sunday and Monday, February 12th and 13th...

It is my second day of being forty-four and I am on the couch alternately applying heat and ice to my knee.  This is because on my first day of being forty-four I attempted something crazy.  Something no one my age had any business doing, evidently.

I tried getting out of my chair and standing.

Kapow!  Blam!  Zowie!  

Pain shot through the outside of my left knee.  Holy aging ligaments, Batman!  Why, why, WHY had I tried getting up without a chair lift?

I was unable to stand, probably due to my extremely low threshold for... er, ethereal sensitivity to pain.  (It's basically a superpower.)  You follow?  My leg did not work for a moment.  Then I hobbled around for the rest of the night and pretty much ever since.  I still don't know what I did, except get old.  

The same night as the chair incident I was perusing my phone with my glasses resting atop my head.  An uber-helpful co-worker asked, "Do you need bifocals, Bone?"  No, this is a fashion statement, I saw it on the cover of Geriatrics Quarterly.  Yes, of course I need bifocals! 

Also, we got new reference books at work with print so microscopic that in order to read it you need a frickin' electron microscope.  Or, average eyesight.  So I had to get another, much younger co-worker to read off some numbers to me.

This came on the heels of me having a grievous cold, my first time being sick in two or three years.  (I still blame the Tdap vaccination the pediatrician unceremoniously forced on me.)  It was the kind of cold that would have knocked an average person off their feet for up to a day.  I was off mine for two, proving yet again that I am not average.

To top it off, my reflux has been acting up, waking me a couple of times a week lately.  At least that'll make for a decent conversation starter down at the convalescent center.

If I were a horse, they'd have to shoot me.  Of course, if I were a horse, I'd be like a hundred and thirty in human years, which would probably be some kind of record.  So maybe they wouldn't shoot me.  I'd most likely be in some kind of equine museum, alongside Secretariat, Mister Ed (of course... of course), and a horse with no name.

How did this happen?  To me???  I was always the one getting the "Well you sure don't look that old" comments.  Just a couple of weeks ago, my 9-year-old niece informed me she thought I was twenty-nine, about to turn thirty.  And trust me, she's a great judge of all things.  (Is it any wonder I married into that family?)

I've most certainly always acted younger than my age.  Much, much younger.  I'm sure any of my ex-girlfriends would attest to that.  And have.   

But suddenly, I'm feeling every last one of my forty-four years.  And about thirty more on top of that.

Mrs. Bone has to be wondering what she's gotten herself into.  To her credit, she hasn't said anything.  Of course if she did, my aged ears probably couldn't hear her anyway.

"I wish I still smoked cigarettes / Felt more grown up then / We were talkin' about where we were gonna go / Instead of talkin' 'bout where we'd been..."