Today is my birthday. I am celebrating the 9th Anniversary of my 29th birthday. It is the day every year that reminds me I am, actually, getting older. Except for my birthday, I tell myself that it is my children that are getting older, not me. I will always be young at heart and how odd it is to be 29 (again) while my oldest is 16 and my baby is 8.
Up 'til this year my vision has been amazing! Just last month Matt was telling me how awesome it is that the girls in the family don't wear glasses since all the boys in the family do. I think he jinxed me! A couple weeks later I went to my eye doctor because my eyes have been seriously dry in the morning, which is a side effect of my allergy meds I started taking a couple months ago. Regular eye drops wasn't doing a blessed thing, thus the doctor visit. Of course the eye doctor insisted on doing an eye exam since I haven't had one done in years. Much to my chagrin, she informed me that while my vision isn't bad, per se, it isn't as good as it used to be and I would probably like some glasses to see things far away, particularly when driving. Please note, that I have not noticed anything different up to this point. But after this point in time, all of a sudden I'm noticing that I need to be closer to read the street signs. And in church, while practicing with the choir, I looked across the chapel past my music folder to discover that everybody at the back of the room was quite blurry. It took much longer than usual to focus in. UGH.
So, needless to say, I am getting glasses. Choosing the glasses was quite the experience. I was hoping to go for something cute, blingy, or sassy but discovered that I had to choose my glasses according to size. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have a big head. Not the arrogant type of big head, I have the largeness type of big head. So all the cute stuff was ruled out and I had to go for practicality. I still had to be careful. Some of the glasses were too dramatic looking. Others were "librarian" style glasses. You know the type, square on the top, but rounded on the bottom. If I still had my long hair wrapped up in a huge bun sitting on the top of my head, you could have stereotyped me as a librarian in a heart beat.
Just about every type of frame made me look older. Therein lies the decision. Frames make me look older; therefore, we buy glasses without frames. It took forever to reach this point and the sales lady wasn't helping any. She wanted me to try everything on whether I liked it or not. But once this decision was made, I had to try on all the frameless glasses to see which shape of lense I wanted. Holy Cow! This was worse than I expected. In case that was not enough decision making, I then had to decide what color wires I wanted to connect my lenses onto my ears. Purple it is, that decision wasn't too difficult.
I'm also getting old lady hands. Don't worry, I won't take three paragraphs to tell you about it. But I have noticed that without regular hydration, they are getting wrinkly.
So what do we do to compensate for all this oldness? Well, I'm hoping for your gentle suggestions. In the meantime, I bought myself a hat covered in bling! It's my favorite color with a fleur de lei (I have no idea how to spell that), which is covered with black sparkly crystal beads! I also bought myself a big flashy purse. I have resigned myself to big purses anyway, after spending much of last year moving up from small purses to medium purses to big purses. My new purse is light lime green with a huge zebra striped flower on the front of it and zebra striped handles. I've been wanting one of these for some time now, and finally found a color I liked with a decent price tag on it. So...Happy Birthday to me! My kids tease me mercilessly about my purse collection. I switch purses about every six weeks. I don't necessarily buy a new purse every six weeks, but I'll go through my collection and find one that suits my mood, or the season, or at least all the stuff I plan to carry.
My memory has also gotten old. I've been living in the hereafter more than usual. Yes, that when I get up to go get something, get to where that something is and can't figure out what I'm here after. Often times if I go back to what I was doing, the thought process will return and I'll get up again to go get it. Luckily there are some OTC supplements that help with this, so I've started taking them again. Seriously, brain food is necessary!
My hair is also getting old. It's coming in white! Yes, exclamation point. Why? Because I like white hair better than gray hair. My grandma has a head of white hair and it is beautiful. Someday I hope my hair will be as pretty as hers as I reach those tender old ages. In the meantime, I have been dying my hair blonde so the white doesn't stand out as much as it did with the browns and reds. Funny thing is my hair fades to a shade of red no matter what color I dye it...except for those white ones. So right now I have blondish red hair, a light strawberry blonde, I guess.
When I wake up in the mornings, it takes me a few steps to be able to stand up straight. I would like to blame it on soreness from exercise; however, lets be honest here people. It doesn't matter if I'm not sore. My joints could use some oil. I'm betting my hearing is going to because it would make perfect sense that my joints creek. Heaven knows they crack all the time.
So if you see me at church Sunday with a cane, some old lady glasses sitting at the bottom of my nose, white hair, and me crouched over having troubles standing up straight, it's only because I've had another birthday and I'm feeling old.
