Tuesday, March 24, 2009

midlife crisis du jour

If you’ve been hanging with this blog a while, you may remember my 50th birthday. Ah, ‘twas a grand weekend. My nearest and dearest gathered to pay joyous tribute to my 50-ness. I wore a tiara, ate chicken fried steak. By the end of the weekend I’d concluded that if that was 50, then I was just fine. Life was good.

OK, so now I’m looking down the barrel of 51 and you know what that means, don’t you? I’m almost 60.

Life is still good but I really hate the birthdays after milestone birthdays. The anticipation (fear, loathing, horror) of the big birthdays is so great that when I get through them without the world crashing around my ears, I feel I should be allowed to simply stop aging—at least for a few years. OK, I survived 50. Now let’s take a breather. We can resume the aging process in a year or two. Or not. I’d be OK if we stopped here.

This is the first year I’ve noticed stuff hurting. The first thing to go is the feet. I enjoy looking at the blog about stylish seniors, Advanced Style (although I think they often set the bar a little low). But I’ve noted that no matter how stylish (or not) these advanced stylistas are, they all are wearing comfortable shoes.

It seems a little rude that my feet should hurt since I’ve never been one for cruel shoes. I didn’t wear heels at all for many years and I haven’t tottered around on anything higher than about three inches since I was a teenager. Am I paying a penalty for my five-inch disco heels now, all these years later?

A friend told me that lose fat on the bottom of our feet as we age, which is why they hurt. Somehow the fat defies gravity and moves up, I guess, to our bellies. But if this is the case and our feet do lose a comfy layer of fat, how about all those people who are perfecting ways to inject fat into our lips start concentrating on fattening up our feet instead? Much more practical.

Not that I would wear them out of the house or anything, but I’m wearing Crocs as I write this. They’re comfortable. And a sure sign that I’m pushing 70.

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've gotten in the habit of turning off my phone on my birthday. It let's me avoid the obligatory phone calls from older siblings, (all of my siblings are older), reminding me of my age and the inevitable "wait til your MY age!" I delete all their messages without listening to them.
What the hell, it works for me and it's MY birthday. I turned 51 in February.

P.S. What color are they?

Sophie said...

Oh, it just gets worse. They're mint green.

Anonymous said...

You know what else is "comfortable?" Elastic waist band pants, great big sunglasses over my prescription glasses, a napkin under my wrist watch band, big blousey underwear or better yet, a diaper. Happy Birthday!

Sophie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sophie said...

Don't rush me. I have two months and one day to go of being 50.

I have decided that sweat pants are The Enemy.

Ruth said...

Fifty now sounds so young to me. Enjoy your youth. I'm sure the bottoms of your feet are still fatter than mine.

Iggy said...

"How do I know my youth has been spent,
My get-up-and-go, got up and went..."