The Matriarchy: Be Careful What You Wish For

When the duty to be the hostess for the family holidays first came down to me, I was excited. I had my mother's Noritake china and brushed gold flatware that I was thrilled to be able to trot out for occasions. I had a house I loved and had the space. Then the reality of it set in:

1. It's a lot of work when you're working a lot.

2. I would try to please two former matriarchs by honoring their traditions and serving their recipes when I had two daughters in the throes of their eating disorders. No one was happy as a result.

3. Instead of sometimes causing some of the family drama (ask me about the Christmas we all got lice that the kids picked up from trying on bonnets at Pioneer Farms for just one example), I had to navigate around it.

4. The reality is, I've concluded, someone will be pissed off at something no matter what you do, but you work so hard to prevent it that it stings on a really deep level all the more because of it.

And yet I persist.  As a matter of fact, I doubled down. Having always wanted Christmas dishes, I got a set of Lenox last fall at an estate sale. If drama will ensue, at least it'll be around a beautifully set table.  But honestly, now that we're a smaller group it's not the drama that threatens to undo me; it's just the labor of it.

When my mother-in-law more or less handed me the reins, no one wanted her to I don't think. They loved their family traditions and it must have seemed like a betrayal of them.  Coming to my house wasn't the same as going back to the home they grew up in. Christmas memories were made at her house, not mine.  I get it, but I can look back now and absolutely know why she did it.  My guess is she was ready to relax and be a guest, not a hostess. I actually almost begged her to take it back for a year in 2009. My daughter had died six months before; I didn't want to throw a family holiday. I wanted nothing to do with the holidays in all candor. But she wasn't having any of it. Maybe she thought it would be good to give me something to do, and maybe it was.  It ended up being one of the nicer, mellow holidays I hosted.  It would be my mom's last, and she had a good day.  That was a gift. But, sometimes I wonder if Jan was just too tired to take it back, even briefly. I understand now if that was the case, I really do.

It starts with Thanksgiving, which is not exactly a walk in the park for a 60-something working woman just on its own.  The day after Thanksgiving, when you've been on your feet all day cooking the day before, you get the honor of working on your feet all day throwing up Christmas decorations. Then the shopping and wrapping ensue.  Every night for nearly a month if I wasn't working or physically at a sporting event, I was wrapping gifts. Countless hours choosing paper, ribbon and unique gift tags to make a nice presentation, all of which will be ripped off in less than two hours on Christmas day. And if you have kids or grandkids, there's the worry of making it all equitable: if one kid has x number of packages to unwrap, the other one better have the same number.  And then there's the mother-in-law in her current state of mind. I got her quite a lot for Christmas a few years back. I felt bad for her at that juncture: she was away from her kids and living in a state she had no affinity for.  You know what she told me? That I embarrassed her.  No thank you.  Just "you embarrassed me." In my kinder moments I understand why: she had always been the one who was the overly generous gift giver, and at that point it bothered her that she could not reciprocate. She doesn't get as much anymore from us.  But there is a lot of worry to not under-do it either; she's still deserving of nice things after all.  To sum up: it's a lot of physical work to wrap all that crap, and a lot of emotional stress about how it'll all be received. Let's not even talk about the expense!

If I wasn't wrapping, I was baking.  Because what's Christmas without home baked cookies? 

Last week after I finished wrapping the last gift, and all the baking and prep work I could do was done, I came downstairs and plopped myself on the couch,  Greg found Captain America on FX for me, and I just stared blankly at it until I finally got the energy to get up and go to bed. To truly appreciate how drained I was: not only do I own all the Avenger and Captain Americas on Blu-ray, I have Disney +, but there I sat watching it with commercials.  Commercials. Who watches stuff with commercials anymore?!

But you get past the wrapping, then there's the actual day: a lot of chaos if kids are involved. And cooking and then hand washing all that fancy Lenox I wanted so badly. It's a long day.

Now add in the caretaker part: Christmas takes a lot out of my MIL. The next day was a true challenge for her, which means it was for us as well.

And that's another point to the holidays: the rest of life keeps going.  All this just gets layered on.

Yeah, I get why Jan threw in the towel at roughly my age. Even at its best it's a lot.

Am I ready to pass the torch myself? No, not really - despite all my belly aching about it. And I don't think my daughter, who works hard and has the other constant exhaustion issue women have - young motherhood - is ready to take it. But what I can tell you is: respect and go hug the matriarch in your family. If she's over the age of 60, flat out worship her because I can tell you that personally all I really want to do now is sleep for a month, and my back wants a divorce. And there's still taking down the decorations to look forward to.  My guess is your mom or grandmother, or whoever filled that role in your life, felt that way too at least some of the time, and I bet you never knew. Because that's the other thing: we all want to make it seem like it was a breeze.

If you are that person, I got nothing but mad respect for you. Let's go for a massage.

Happy New Year!

What's Aging Anyway?

You've probably said one of these.  I'm pretty sure I've said them all to various friends on birthday cards and Facebook greetings:

"You're only as old as you feel."

"Age is just a number."

"We're like fine wines; we improve with age." (That's a staple in my retinue.)

There are other sappier ones:

"Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity or strength." Barf.  Whoever wrote that one was not my age.

Point being: I sometimes wonder what it was that prompted me to decide that I was "aging" to the point I could write a blog about it like I knew whereof I speak. I'm still working. I'm not at Medicare age yet, which I think a lot of people would say is the ultimate threshold.  I am eligible for some senior discounts but some I'm still a year or more away from.  What made me think I'm aging?

Well, there's sort of a sad story that I'll relate in time that shook me to my core and really made me ponder the cruel cycle of life and how uncertain it is.  Amy's Ice Cream is right: we need to eat our dessert first (Austinites: do they still say that as their catch phrase?) But that wasn't really it, because that happened a couple of years before.

It wasn't the grey hair thing; that may have been the last straw, but it was percolating before that.

Was it the fact that I realize I'm stuck with the job I have probably until the end of my working days because no one is going to take a flier on a female with no formal degree in her mid-60's?

And don't get me wrong: I'm not saying I'm old.  Nor are you, Dear Reader. It's not that we're old. But I'm conceding that I'm aging. And if you're reading this, maybe you think you are too.

But why do I think I'm aging? Why do you? What is that anyway?

I think for me it was a realization that I'm no longer in total control of my own body. I mean, I suppose it's a fallacy that any of us truly are at any point in life.  The same Peloton coach I mentioned in a recent post had a stroke in his early 30's.  That surely was not something he controlled. But, I mean, and you know that there's a presumption we have in our early adult life that if we don't like something about ourselves we can change it. Think your arms are flabby?  Do strength training and tone them up. Think you need to lose weight? Change your diet, start to exercise and the pounds will come off (I haven't even done the weight blog post yet...but trust me, I will). If you want to go back to school, go. If you want a new job, find it.  We put up with bullshit that maybe we shouldn't because we rely on the fact that when we're ready to change it, we can. There is an infinite amount of potential we possess. 

But at some subtle point I started to realize the "in" disappeared in my potential and now I just have a finite amount. Menopause, as I think I mentioned, was one such tipping point: when I realized it had come and gone, there was just a moment of regret that a door was closing on an important part of my life.  Then the moment was gone, and I was just happy to lock that door and throw away the key. But those moments crop up a lot these days - all the little things I've been posting about that pop up out of nowhere and I can't seem to control.  And trust me, I'm a self-confessed control freak for a reason, so it's making me crazy!  

Which brings me to the next question for all of us to ponder: what is aging gracefully?

Remember the adage, "Never ask a lady her age"?  Well I'm trying to be loud and proud about my age.  Mainly because if I'm anything else, it doesn't change how old I am, so embrace the suck as soldiers say. I see photos of actresses who absolute destroy themselves with cosmetic surgeries and treatments and think to myself that it's better to just let time etch its story on my face than risk that. Then again, I look at Jane Fonda, who looks pretty good for her age and wonder...should I at least do Botox?

I told my husband the other day, my mind is no longer a steel trap. The steel is rusty. (Not sure it ever was to be honest, but you get the gist.) I tire more easily, so there are no more 20 hour workdays because it's not just the body but the mind that just puts the brakes on at some point in the evening. Do I fight that so I can continue to put in the work, or do I let myself relax a little, letting those long, arduous days be history? But if I do, can I be employable?

In short, in all the times I envisioned getting older and how I would accept it and handle it, I never envisioned the many conundrums and decisions it would bring with it.  I'm still navigating that minefield personally and trying to define "graceful aging".  Tell me how you do it.

The Grand Advantage, Part Two: The Spoiling

If I could assign my daughter to write her version of this story I candidly worry how it might go. She rarely complains out loud that I spoil her kids rotten and then leave her to deal with the unrealistic expectation that every day should be a party with presents. I'm sure there are times my indulgences are helpful - like my mom's were when my daughter was growing up. My mom could not be counted on to attend the school concerts but she was there to take them back-to-school shopping, and that was helpful because a free education is anything but free. And it probably is helpful for my daughter too when I offer, particularly at today's prices. I want to be present and able to do both the school events and the school shopping...

...and try not to overdo it or step on any toes. I mean, I haven't whisked them off to Disney World or anything, although I would like to do that...if circumstances were different.  But if we go somewhere locally - a museum, the oft-visited zoo, even just a bakery run - they rarely come back empty handed. I am not trying to buy their love; at least consciously. And I don't really think that I need to. But I am self-aware enough to know I am compensating for where I think I failed as a parent, and there is a large part of me that thinks I have been given not one, but two second chances. I bet my daughter knows that too, and maybe that's why she suffers - assuming she does actually suffer over this - in silence. Maybe her act of love towards me is to let me indulge her kids like there's no tomorrow.

I doubt in the age of two-income families that I am all that unique, both how tight things were for me as a parent, and how indulgent I tend to be now.  Long story short, we got married probably before we should have. We had no money, were definitely too immature to be an independent adult couple, and also too immature to know it. I was SO immature I thought I knew everything about living independently because I had been out of my parent's house for five whole years, like that was such a lifetime (insert eyeroll here). Then, before our first anniversary I was pregnant.  Definitely too young, dumb and poor for that looming responsibility, that's for damn sure. But, there I was: faced with a young family and very modest means.  When my oldest was facing her first Christmas we had no money to buy her gifts, but I had a Sears credit card so we went down to the old outdoor mall Hancock Center (any Austinites remember that place?) and scoured through the whole two aisles of toys for anything we could buy for an infant girl.  The thing I remember specifically getting, both because it definitely didn't fit the "infant" appropriate genre and because it ended up being well loved and well used by both girls well into their late teens, was a Cinderella cloth tote. I have no idea how long it took me to pay down the credit card, but probably a long time. And would my daughter have realized if she did or didn't get any gifts on that particular day from her mom and dad?  Doubtful. But I would have, and that feeling sticks with you. You want to give your kids everything. Few of us actually can.

I'm not saying I can give the grands everything in compensation for those lean years now, but I am no longer in a place where I'm worried about paying the utilities and buying groceries (although I complain mightily about the costs of both), so I have a little more leeway than I did when my kids were young, and I'm also at a point in my life that if I want to spend my money on my grandchildren and my dogs, then that's up to me. In short, I'm at the point where I have a bit of an attitude and don't want to be told what to do (some might say that's nothing new).

Christmas is the ultimate litmus test if grandparents have created little monsters, and I had a bit of a worry that I had last year when they tore through everything I had spent months curating and then were genuinely disappointed there wasn't more. I think their reaction isn't just about me though: Christmas is just over-commercialized in general. The "spirit" of the season - no matter what religion you may subscribe to - has been supplanted by Black Friday sales that now start in October. I've been bombarded with nothing but Christmas ads since before Halloween...kids see all that too and who can blame them? A lot of it is designed specifically to whip us all into a frenzy of desire. Objective met.

I've been pondering all this as I look at the stash of presents I've been gathering for months and trying to contemplate if it's enough. I sometimes literally feel the push and pull of emotions like a physical tug: one part of me saying, "it should be, and you can't afford much more" and another part of me saying, "they'll be disappointed with only this much. You need to find more."

It's a genuine conundrum. Of course, the obvious answer is to spend time with them just enjoying the season. Easier said than done with the mother-in-law in residence and work...always the Christmas challenge: regular life doesn't stop for the holidays, expectations just pile on. But that's a worry for another post. The point to this one: many of us spoil our grands. I think the motives of many aren't that far off from mine. Do we go too far?  Or is it a rite we earned?

Discuss.

Oh My Aching....

Bradley Rose, Peloton

I take a lot of Peloton classes from a young Brit named Bradley Rose. He's funny, cute (I may need glasses but I'm not blind), and does a lot of Pop Punk rides, which I love.  And occasionally he'll drop some life affirming wisdom that I need to hear.  But his brand is a light, self-effacing humor, and he's got that 30-something "I'm getting so old" attitude that I remember having myself but laugh at now. In one of the classes I took recently he said he's to the point he doesn't know if he has an injury or this is the way he's going to be, and then went on to complain about all his aches and pains when he gets up in the morning. I had to smile and shake my head and think to myself, "Oh, honey, you have no idea. Just wait."

But it was interesting timing because after a busy, busy Sunday I had wrapped myself in my fancy heating pad that I got for Christmas last year and wondered if I overdid it and that's why my back was screaming profanity at me or if I was coming down with something because my temperature was just slightly elevated. Or was my temperature elevated because I was wearing a heating pad? Or maybe it was a bit of both.  And how sad is it that someone gets you a heating pad for a gift...and you're actually excited about it?!

I admittedly did a lot of activities that day that would challenge anyone who isn't a professional athlete's back but it hurt for days. It's not a shock or particularly unusual that I abuse my body the way I did on the weekend because, like a lot of us, when else do you have a chance to get stuff done, so you just have to suck it up and push yourself to your limits and accept you'll suffer some soreness because of it, The newish part is that it takes forever to stop hurting. That's the difference between me now and the me who was once Bradley Rose's age.  Yeah, I woke up stiff a lot in my 30's, but walked or steam showered it out. Now once I tweak something, it stays tweaked.

And suddenly things happen that I have NO clue how they happened.  For example, I've been nursing a sore left ankle all summer.  It got bad enough at one point I wrapped it in order to click into the bike.  I think maybe, but I'm not sure, that I actually hurt it clipping out of the bike, which takes a little effort. If you look at Bradley's shoes in the photo, that red part on the bottom actually locks into the pedal so you don't slip and hurt yourself.  But you do have to turn your ankle a bit to release the shoe, so it was all I could think of that could have happened.  Ironic?  Yeah.  Well, it gets worse. So a couple of months after the ankle started, my left hand started to give me a lot of trouble.  It ached at its best.  It made me wince at its worst. But not the wrist, the hand and the fleshy part of the hand is the part that hurts.  I panicked that it might be arthritis starting, but it wasn't the joint.  Then I thought carpal tunnel.  But the symptoms aren't quite right for that either.  I work a lot on the keyboard and notice I rest that part of my hand on the wrist pad, so maybe that's the cause...but more likely it's how I hold my hands on the handlebars of the bike.  And when it's flaring, riding the bike can be extra spicy. I have to consider that's the cause.  Again, irony raises its head...the very thing I rely on to keep myself limber and active is potentially injuring me, and I haven't even talked about my knees!

I'm wondering when and how my body decided to hang on to every small insult I impose on it and torture me with it, but I know I'm not alone because my husband mentioned yesterday that a bump he had incurred when he tripped over something a couple of weeks ago is still there and bothering him.  So, here we are: oddly sore 60-somethings where this is waiting for us this coming weekend:

My back hurts just thinking about it.  

How about you?  Noticing any odd aches and pains that linger as you age?  Have you found a great way to alleviate the issues?  Do please share!!

The Grand Advantage, Part One: A Second Childhood

 Over time I have made some observations about grandparents. Not judgments, observations:

• They are often indulgent because they want to make up for what they believe they could not give their own children (ironically, mine weren't particularly generous - ask any of my cousins - but there are exceptions to every rule).
  
  
• They are trying to make up for the parenting mistakes they made with their own kids that run the gamut from working too much, being too impatient, too judgmental, you name it.
  
  
• They are pursuing a second childhood through their grandkids (again, mine missed that day in Grandparent School - and maybe that's why I would watch others so closely).

Once I became one I had to plead guilty on all counts. And I'm sorry, but I'm not all that sorry about it. There are some lines I have to sometimes be reminded not to cross, and I try to let my child raise her own children without being a total helicopter parent. She'll have to tell you how I do on that count.

But in light of my last post, I thought I'd start with the fun one to lighten the mood: getting a shot at a second childhood. And in that regard, I'm all in.

Life can tend to suck: it's stressful, full of obligations and now, as we head into our fourth quarter, we're often limping into the huddle with bumps and bruises. But when the opportunity to spend time with the Grands (as I collectively call mine) arises, life's problems get shoved aside and it's time to just live. Now I'll grant you, they often have more energy than I do, or can sustain anyway, but I'm getting a chance to indulge unapologetically in things I wouldn't get too ordinarily. As a friend recently observed from my social media, we go to the zoo a lot. For one, it's easy and close, but I love the zoo and so does my granddaughter - her love is more about the fact that they have ice cream and cotton candy, I think, than the animals themselves, but hey we can have dovetailing interests. With her on our Adventure Saturdays I have the unbridled excuse to go to the Science Center, the zoo, the aviary, the Natural History Museum, the children's section of the library, the park, the mall, shopping for toys, and oh yes, a lot of ice cream stands. Ironically about the only thing we haven't really done a lot of is go to the Children's Museum - got to leave something for the actual parents to share with her I suppose.

With my grandson, I've been able to re-engage with my childhood fascination with Godzilla. I might feel a little guilty about encouraging that one I will admit: after all, the Titans do tend to do a lot of stomping on cities and terrorizing of people on their way to being a metaphor about the nuclear age, but I will make the argument that I grew up watching Godzilla, and I feed birds and rescue dogs - I got the message of those movies early on and am not a violent person, so I think he's intelligent enough to do the same. The other day we watched the Miles Morales iteration of Spider-Man.  Candidly, those are brilliant films, and if you haven't seen the two animated installments of the Spider-Man franchise, do yourself a favor: grands or no grands, and check them out.  But I can and do because I've got the built-in excuse of entertaining a nearly 7 yr-old boy.

With grandchildren, we have ready-made excuses to go to parades, fall festivals, carve pumpkins, bake cookies, go to ball games, you name it. We get to watch their excitement and catch onto some of it when they experience something for the first time.  They provide us the very necessary opportunity to be reminded that life is not just about our obligations, but it's about living. They remind us that big joy can be found in little packages. I am blessed to have them in my life to remind me of these things.  And if it took getting older to get to that, then I'm fine with it.

Better Days

"We never miss the flowers

Until the sun's down

We never count the hours

Until they're runnin' out..."

Better Days, Dermont Kennedy

I haven't had a lot of time to write lately. Ironic really, since my mother-in-law has been in a rehab facility having to learn how to walk again in light of a fall recently that hurt her shoulder (she relies on a walker, so that's why a shoulder impacts someone's legs - the trials and travails of being almost 90 are far different than what I write about, I will freely admit). Anyway, you would think we'd have SO much down time since we don't have her to constantly care for (she's well past having the filter to know when we're working and shouldn't be bothered, what is or isn't critical, or having any sense at all that we need our own time to eat a meal or watch a show or just sit down for a minute). Well, what I found is that it's absolutely true that nature hates a vacuum. I spent one long night deep cleaning in her room, and I've organized her drawers that had become a chaotic and crumpled mix of sweaters mixed in with shorts, mixed in with night gowns. We took the glass recycling that had accumulated for months down to the recycling center. I went to Target by myself and bought Christmas presents. (That was such a weird feeling honestly - running errands without someone - I felt like I'd snuck out of the house after curfew.) I shampooed rugs and varnished the hardwood floors. My husband pruned shrubs and cleaned out beds we hadn't been able to get to. And, yes, we made it to a baseball game - first time in over a year. And my husband did get to go to the Steelers game with me, and we've gone out to breakfast four times (I like breakfast, particularly in the fall when the chance of finding something with pumpkin in it is high). I met a friend one quiet evening for a couple of beers and deep discussions about life. But in short, it's been a frenzied few weeks trying to jam in everything we can, bracing ourselves for when she comes home this afternoon and needs more support than ever before. 

I know I've gone here before: caring for someone when you're grappling with the challenges of caring for yourself as you age. But the last couple of weeks have put a point on it. This is the way it's been through the ages - caring for our elders - of course, and it's expected in different cultures, but I confess I had a different vision for my "golden years", and it wasn't being quite in this role. At first I made little jokes about being under house arrest, then the pandemic happened and it was actually easier to be so tied to home base - everyone was. But once the restrictions eased, and I was still like a kid with her nose pressed against the glass looking in on the candy store but not able to partake, then the joke about house arrest became less funny. We are at the five year mark, and now it's not only not funny, it's a legitimate mental health crisis. I'm sorry to have to confess it, but it's true and at this stage, it's serious.

And I'm a little worried frankly.

I worry about all of it: my own mental state, my husband's, how it impacts the rest of the family, dogs included, and not the least of which is how our mental state impacts how able we are to care for the fragile human being we are 100% responsible for. I worry about the money. I worry what will happen if one of us gets critically ill, like cancer, and how we would cope with that too. I worry about how the house isn't really built to accommodate someone in her condition, and if I'm being blunt, the wear and tear it's taken as a result, not just how hard for her to manage in it.  And the guilt? Oh, it's immense!  I know there are so many people who are in worse situations. And this is a woman who has been very good to me through the years; how can I feel stressed about caring for her?  What kind of monster am I? In short, my brain is firing almost constantly about everything. It's exhausting.

We are not unique. The Family Caregiver Alliance reports that 34.2 million Americans have provided unpaid care to an adult 50 years or older in the last year. My mother-in-law must be attended 24/7/365, and as evidenced by this most recent fall, things still happen even with at least one of us right here. I am not sure of the 34.2 million folks in our shoes are walking that exact path, but bless those who are because, I'm sorry, it's just not easy. No matter how much you love the person you care for. We're not trained for it, we still have to make a living, now more than ever because she's dependent upon us financially as well, and we still have all our other obligations.

You might be thinking: dumbass, get into therapy or go to a support group.  I've been there and done that, but I'll spare you those details and suffice it to say I am very sympathetic to caregivers who struggle to afford or find viable options. I agree it's important, and it can help. It's not everything.  

For us, I get out more on a weekly basis than my husband does. For one thing, I help with the grands and I have been having Adventure Saturdays with my granddaughter for quite some time now (as one friend pointed out, we go to the zoo a lot), and I have my Steelers and Penguins, but he travels for work quite a bit and gets some time that way. But we can't wake up on a Saturday morning and ask ourselves, "What would you like to do today?" Every step outside the house has to be planned with one of us going and one of us staying. The last time we went to a movie together was in 2019.  Even for someone like me who is rigidly routine driven, there's a point where that becomes more than tedious.

We will soldier on of course, but for any of you who are also caregivers, weigh in!  What are your challenges? What are your coping mechanisms? And, maybe more than anything else, how do you find moments of joy even when times are challenging?

Defying the Vulture

Growing up my family lived just across the dirt side road from the Myers.  We knew them well, and I have many stories and experiences with the Myers - their kids babysat me and gave me their cast off stuffies, some of which I still have, and let me play dress up with their old clothes, but it was the mom whom I was entranced with.  Laura. To my mind she was a goddess. A beautiful Italian beauty with a joie de vivre (or however you say that in Italian). I wanted to be her, but failing that, I wanted to be around her as much as possible. Like all small children around adults I had a hard time gauging what her actual age was - she was "older" but she probably was in her prime when I knew her - early 40's maybe. Old enough to be worldly. Young enough to want to be in and of the world. At some point, they moved to Great Falls, which broke my heart but I still saw them from time to time and even after I moved out on my own and was living in Texas we kept in touch, and at some point she wrote, or Mother maybe told me, she had begun running marathons.  For seniors. But marathons. I couldn't run around the block at the time. Still can't probably. I hate running. But I was duly impressed, and expected nothing less from an amazing woman who - somewhat opposite of my mom who expected women to act their age - wanted to defy it and did so with her typical aplomb.

I thought about her when I was on vacation recently. I took some time in rural Ohio to hike and do some reading. I took Carly, one of my collies, with me, and on the first day we went on what was supposed to be an easy day of bird watching, but it was also in the full sun on a hot and very humid day so I took us off on a side path. It was beautiful and shaded but it got us lost. I turned a 3.5 mile walk into a 6.8 mile full on hike. As I finally found our way out onto the original path, we were faced with a heavy incline. Carly is an excellent hiker as it happens, but I was pretty badly winded by the time we made it to the top of the incline. I watched a shadow pass over us and saw a massive bird with an incredible wingspan fly past and settle on an electrical tower a ways off, watching us. From the distance, I couldn't tell what it was. I was hoping for an eagle. As we came closer, it became clear it was a vulture.  Not at all bothered by our proximity, it was just watching patiently, as if it was biding its time.  I stopped and watched it for a while and it watched us back.  I finally asked it, "So did you see me on that incline and figured I wasn't going to make it, and you were just waiting for me to collapse?" It just watched.  I took that as a yes. I am no Laura Myers.

But I'm not ready to be vulture meat either. This morning I participated in the Steelers 5K Run/Walk (I walk). Since I've been doing it, I've shaved ten minutes off my original time and was hoping for a personal record today. I felt great and I might have made it but a woman who looked to be roughly my age became dizzy and disoriented and collapsed in front of me literally in the shadow of the stadium where we finish. Her family caught up to her and took over and sent several of us who had gathered around her on our way, but it cost me, and I finished two minutes off last year's official time, so who knows what I could have done, but I was confident enough with how I felt to conclude I'm not marathon ready but I'm still strong enough.

I think about Laura not letting age be anything but a number, but I've been thinking about that poor woman this morning (clearly also a Pelotoner based on a shirt she was wearing), and I realize we're all over the map at 60+. Life deals us different cards and all we can do is play the hand we're dealt. But I'm struggling with determining how will I know what the limits are, and when I'm supposed to cash in my chips? Clearly the woman today wasn't realistic about what she could put out there on a hot, humid day. Will I know my limits? Will I be smart about it? I don't want to be afraid to keep active either. We think we can listen to our bodies and that will tell us, but does our brain interfere with that and set unrealistic limits, for better or for worse?

How do you tackle staying fit? How are you staying smart about it?