Who? What? Where? When? I Don't Remember.

I'm tired of getting old.  Now my 'good foot' is going wonky.  I finally admitted it was really hurting and getting worse, so I went to the doctor.  Turns out that I've damaged it, and now I'm wearing a foot brace that I have to wear 24/7 until I see the doctor again in one month.  But that's not ALL.  Right now, if I put my computer down and stood up, I would have to wait for everything to 'settle', and it would still hurt somewhere when I took my first step.  Lots and lots of niggling little aches and pains that individually don't really bother me that much, but taken all together, well, it's a miracle I get out of bed.  

I shouldn't complain since I can get out of bed, but I exercise almost every day. I'm supposed to feel better, aren't I?  I supposed to be bursting with energy. For heaven sake's I swam laps more than 30 minutes today and did other stuff in the pool.  Tomorrow, I'll probably lift weights - and then I'll really hurt.  Ok, Ok, Ok.  It's not just the physical stuff.

 I'm discovering I'm losing the ability to spell.  I've always been a great visual speller, and I can still usually do that, but sometimes, I now have to spell a word phonetically - yeah, I had to do that with the "p" word in this sentence.  I got the red wavy underline which just silently screams, "You dummy".  Spell check is saving my ass.  How depressing.  I was never a good audible speller, but to just have words 'vanish' out of my head is disconcerting.  It's not every word, of course, but sometimes it's EASY words that go poof.  I just hate that.

Also, soon I'm going to have to write a list to make sure I remember everything I need to do to go pee.  My life is totally controlled by lists and calendars.  My mother was the queen of lists and the empress of the calendar.  Now, I understand why.  If I don't write it down, then I don't remember when/what/who.  I can just about remember to buy four items at the grocery store without having to make a list.  Does it count against me that I have to say the four items as a mantra under my breath the entire time I drive to the store?

Don't get me started with trying to 'find' something.  This one is really frustrating.  Drake insisted that we list everything that's packed in a 'tub' when we started this peripatetic (got that one spelled the first time!) life.  That system has worked really well.  As we move around, though, last minute stuff in these mini-moves tends to get tucked away in that nebulous land of 'someplace'.  As in, "I know I put it SOMEPLACE!"   Occasionally, "someplace" turns into, "DAMNATION!  I can't believe that I left that, forgot that, or lost that."

We also play a new game around here called, "Where are my glasses?"  No, it's not me - mine are always on my face.  It's Drake.  A few days ago, he looked and looked and looked for his favorite pair.  They are not different from his others, but they are in his special soft leather case.  He stomped around muttering, "I've just gone off and left them somewhere."  Fortunately, they rematerialized.  We went from, "Damn it, I've lost them!" into "Oh, I forgot, they were in my jacket pocket."  This was a two day morph which caused quite a bit of angst around here.

I can also feel my brain processes slowing down.  Now, I understand why the elderly increasingly dislike change and having to make snap decisions.  I'm getting it.  They are worried they've forgotten some key thing, and it paralyzes their decision making.  Moving around from town to town is actually very helpful; we have to adapt to new traffic, new land marks, and have to REMEMBER where things are.  Most days we are holding our own except on the days we don't.  Those are the U-turn days.  Or, the ones that have queries of, "Where was the CVS?"  "Do you remember how we went to the post office last time?"

I also miss 'automatic pilot'.  I used to be able to think or talk about something while doing some routine something else at the same time.  My auto pilot got me through all the mundane stuff while I enjoyed doing other things with my brain.  Now, that luxury has slipped away.  I have to actually pay attention to the ordinary repetitive stuff, or I will forget some key thing in the sequence that used to be just automatic. If I don't give the ordinary my complete attention, I periodically leave the house without something, or I wander around retracing my steps a zillion times as I try to get the easy stuff done. 

I'm also tired of wrinkles, age spots, and drooping whatever.  This actually bothers me less than the other stuff since I was never a great beauty.  For those women who WERE beauties in their youth, this wrinkle, droop, spot thing must be horrifying and anger inducing.  You know what the worst part is?  It's looking in the mirror and seeing the faint lines that YOU KNOW are going to be cavernous wrinkles in another ten years.  That's why really, really old women never look like pictures of their younger selves.  We change into people we don't even recognize in the mirror.  How screwed up is that?

All right, I've finished whining.  Just saying that some days life seems all uphill with pot holes.  Of course, at some point, any day you're vertical instead of horizontal is a good day.  Just goes to show:  All things are relative.