Even though I do my best to ignore my birthdays, I can still tell I’m aging. Things don’t look the same anymore. And they don’t work the same anymore. And if you’re as body conscious as me, it ain’t pretty.
I blame EVERYTHING on stress. And not on the fact that I’m sitting here eating a bag of gingersnaps as I type.
I saw Christie Brinkley on TV the other day. We’re around the same age. I don’t know what she eats for breakfast, but she looks GREAT.
Christie Brinkley, California girl and supermodel. Maybe aging is just a CA State of Mind?
In the interview Christie said she has never felt better, that she stays active, works out, and blah blah blah. Sorry, not buying it. Is she saying that she’s in better shape now than when she danced pranced in the Uptown Girl video 28 years ago? Doubt it. She gets out of bed every morning and feels the stiffness in the lower back—just like the rest of us.
Although, she does have a chipper personality. Maybe she gets out of bad and is so happy she doesn’t have to look at Dopey Husband #5 she doesn’t notice the stiffness.
I remember reading an article about aging when I was in my twenties. (Back then it must have been Glamour Magazine. TG I outgrew that waste of trees. I think I stopped reading it when it said that women shouldn’t sweat and therefore should wear underarm “dress shields” when going out in public—and especially to parties. Oh crimoney. Can we please just let women be women? Dress shields?! About as fun to wear as a sanitary belt and Kotex.)
The article I recall was a series of drawings of the same female form as it aged from a woman in her 20s to her 30s, then 40s, and 50s (where it stopped, I guess because 50 is as old as it gets!) I looked at the last woman—with gray hair, wrinkled face, expanded waistline, shrunken shoulders, and slouchy posture and thought, “Somebody better invent the Fountain of Youth Pill—quick!”
Last month there was an article in USA Today (as part of a series of articles on Baby Boomers) called “The shape of things can change.” This time there is an anatomical drawing of a man showing the “Effects of aging on the human body.” The chart lists 19 things that can and WILL go wrong, such as “Liver and kidneys lose mass and some efficiency.” Terrific.
I enjoyed the skin prognostication: “Liver spots may form because of extensive sun exposure.” Lovely. Being a fair-haired sun worshipper in my wanton youth, I have plenty of “sun spots” (as I call them—always hated liver!) to prove it.
They’re all over my hands. It’s starting to bug me. Like when I’m at the Apple Store and some kid is trying to show me how to use my iPhone. And I have to put on my reading glasses because I can’t see the pictures very well—and the sun spots look even bigger—and worse in the fluorescent lights—and I can’t focus because I’m thinking, “Man, aging is the pits!” But I say, “Huh? Push what button again, Sonny?” (And then I think, OMG I sound just like my mother!)
Getting older…ICK. I’ll be reporting on more than the 19 things that can and will go wrong in upcoming health blogs. Maybe I’ll do a whole series called: “Here’s what fell apart this week.” Like the leaking of synovial fluid in my finger, which forms a puddle under the skin next to my fingernail. (Didn’t read about that in Glamour Magazine.)
Think it ever happens to Christie Brinkley?
I look as good as Christie Brinkley -- don't I?
USA Today article:
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/fitness/exercise/2010-12-13-boomerbreakdown13_ST_N.htm
