Getting Older

I’ve always been a sucker for a clean cut man wearing glasses, so I married one. 
Then he went and got laser eye surgery. 

I realise there were a number of very good pros for him having had done this such as never again losing his glasses, no more getting new prescriptions every six months and of course there’s the awful memory of the glasses a co worker told him made him look a bit special, but not in a good way.

The cons for me were firstly, no more Clarke Kent fantasy, but more importantly and worryingly, he could suddenly see everything.  Everything!  My open pores, wrinkles, grey hairs, black heads – the lot.

It was very worrying for me at first, but he has coped well.  I have managed for the most part to erase from my memory the look on his face the first time he saw me in the cold light of day with a head cold, sans make up and in need of my roots being touched up.

Credit where it’s due though, he didn’t run for the hills.

Getting older is a funny old thing.  When I turned 30 I remember thinking it was no big deal, just a number.  It didn’t change me or define me.  I was still me.

Then I turned 31 and the shock was like a kick in the gut from a very large boot with a stiletto heel on the foot as a chaser.  I think I was so intent on not caring about being 30 that I forgot the ageing process would continue beyond that and what’s more, somehow speed up.

I’m almost out of my thirties now and looking back they have been amazing.

I’ve had the best and the worst times of my life during the last ten years.  I’ve lived through a lot and I’m still standing.

I’ve learned invaluable lessons, like the words to the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song and how to boil an egg.

The time management classes I did at college have finally become really relevant.  I can now cook dinner, unload the dishwasher, deal with up to 3 loads of laundry, talk on the phone, remove peanut butter from a hair brush, reload the dishwasher and feed the cat all at once.

I’ve gotten to know myself a lot better than I ever did before and I’m learning life’s a constant learning curve.  I’ll never know everything but I’ll always learn something new.

Of course I do now have to go to bed earlier and parts of me creak that didn’t used to.  I also need to plan well in advance for drinking more than one drink, as my hangovers now happen with a lot less alcohol and last a lot longer than they used to.

Of course there’s the new wrinkles, the grey roots, those funny brown marks on my hands, the fact that I can’t wear metallic eye shadow or it all moves into the creases of my eyes and I look like my daughter ran out of paper and used me to draw on with her new sparkly pens.

Of course, on the Brightside there is plenty of concealer and hair dye in the chemist up the road.