I Don't Feel Old

It's hard to believe it's December already.  Where did 2012 go?

My next milestone birthday looms this week. I haven't decided how I feel about it. Grateful to be alive, for sure! Someone I work with asked me last week if this one would bother me. She will be experiencing the same milestone birthday two days after mine, and she was not looking forward to it. I told her that I was trying not to think too much about it. I don't feel old, so I don't want to start thinking old. You're only as old as you feel, right?

I checked in with my parents this week, as I usually do. It's frustrating to try talking to them on the phone while they are having a conversation with someone else in the same room with them. It happens more often with mom. I guess she's multitasking. But sometimes it leaves me wondering if she heard anything I said to her. Even when I visit, she seems lost in her own world. When my kids were little, she adored them. As they grew up, however, she seemed to lose interest in them. I don't mean that she doesn't care about them - she does. But instead of being interested in what they are doing, she still wants to talk about her. This is frustrating to me, but I don't think she even realizes she's doing it.

I was talking with others about older people and their idiosyncracies. Women, especially, seem to become more self-centered as they age. Is it because many of them are widowed and alone, with nobody to talk to? For those who are still married, have they and their husbands drifted so far apart that they don't talk? We all like to talk about ourselves, to some degree, but many of these women do it incessantly. In a conversation with them, everything you say is somehow turned around to be about them. It makes it difficult to have conversations with them.

And their need to take a bath in perfume? I believe it stems from a desire to hide body odor. While I understand that desire, is it really necessary to dowse yourself in it? It's very overwhelming to those nearby, especially those with health issues that are exacerbated by the perfumes.

As I attempt to age gracefully, I hope that I am able to avoid doing some of the things I find offensive in others. I realize though that I am human, I am woman, and aw, heck - I am getting older, too.