AARP -- Starting the Creep to the Big Five Ohhh!

I have sort of started the “countdown” to that milestone of a birthday – number 50. Eeeeeks! God, I don’t know if I am ready for an AARP membership yet, but, ready or not…..

Man, it does just seem like yesterday that I was in my twenties, full of energy, and taking my life and health for granted. Approaching fifty is scary for me because I am about to reach the age that my father was when he passed away – he was just a few months shy of fifty when he had a heart attack at five in the morning while sitting at a black jack table in a casino on the outskirts of Vegas. (I think I will stay away from the Vegas area for the time being, and I am especially going to steer clear of Black Jack tables.)

Didn’t Billy Joel sing about the fact that “only the good die young?” Well, I am beginning to think I am not so good, but at the same time, that suits me just fine. I have heard people say that they become more comfortable “in their skin” as they age. My skin just gets more spots on it, and I can’t say that it is more comfortable – maybe more wrinkled and saggy, but comfortable just isn’t a word I would use – just yet anyway.

I am vain, and I admit it. I get my hair bleached out on a regular basis to get rid of the gray, or more appropriately – the white. I stay out of the sun as much as possible, although I do love to go for a dip in the pool on a hot summer day. I do suffer (to some extent) from a receding hair line, although I don’t think it is “classic” male pattern baldness – whatever it is, I don’t like it! I can’t sleep as well during the night, and I get up a few times more than I would like to take a piss – damn prostate! And of course there is the gas and bloating to deal with.

Saving for retirement is a stressful thing to think about. How much money is “enough” money? What should I invest in? How much risk should I take on with my investments? Is Social Security even going to be around in a few more years? I certainly don’t want to be old and poor, but I also don’t want anyone fighting over what little I may leave behind. It would be great if I could write out that last check and spend my last dollar on a nice shot of Cognac before “the big sleep” (that is what Katherine Hepburn used to call death – “the big sleep.”)

But, all in all, I have been pretty lucky. I have had to deal with some chronic health issues, but I guess at some point that is just going to happen, so I may as well get used to it. The hardest part of this “aging thing” is to see my parent’s generation now slowly begin to pass away. On a lot of different levels, watching my family and friends leave this earth is difficult; least I mention that the line to visit the Grim Reaper is getting shorter and shorter? Anyway, I greatly miss all of my family and friends that are now gone. And, I do think more and more about my own mortality and what I have done in my life, and where I want to go from here.

So, it is just time to make the most of it, I guess. I want to take that trip to Europe that I keep promising myself I am going to do – it is time to do it. I want to be in as good of shape as I can possibly be at fifty, so, it is definitely time to take aerobics exercise more serious. It is also time to lay off the fatty foods and cookies, and cakes, and ice cream. It is time for yogurt, and oatmeal, and fresh fruits and vegetables. And, more than anything, it is time to start having a whole lot of fun!