There are many joys of aging, such as discounts at stores and services, using it as a convenient excuse for being forgetful, and smiling that few thieves would know how to drive my stick shift VW Beetle.
I can also stop obsessing about everything I wanted to do before I was 60 (or 70), because, well, it’s too late now. It’s a blessing in a disguise of gray hair.
But there are downsides, too. Like dealing with Medicare, assuming I can find doctors that will accept Medicare.
Or figuring out why the keyboard on my laptop (yes, it’s old, too) doesn’t work so well. Four keys have stopped working: 1, Q, A and Z. Yes, the left-hand row of keys. So I carry around a big detached keyboard to plug into my small laptop. Sure, I could solve the problem with a new laptop, but remember I drive a stick shift, wear saddle shoes from the ’50s, and call it spaghetti, not pasta. Change comes hard for me.
What also comes hard is sleeping.
Not falling asleep. I do that easy. It seems I am always tired. It’s staying asleep that is the challenge.
In all senior-citizen honesty, the biggest handicap to a full night’s sleep is going to the bathroom — multiple times. I try to defeat the Law of Bladders by cutting off all water at about 7 p.m. It hasn’t worked. I think sometimes my system stores up water for later, just to remind me I have no control over my own body.
Since middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom are inevitable, I have developed my own system of memorizing the path to the room, so that I can walk the walk without really waking up. In theory, in my own home, that mostly works. The problem is when I travel, such as when I was in a hotel and refused to open my eyes, not wanting to wake up, and walked into the bathroom door, cutting my head. I looked pretty stupid at the event the next morning with a big Band-Aid, and wondered what housekeeping would think of the blood on the towel and pillowcase.
When I do wake up hours before I want to start the day, I try to force myself not to think, not to start my brain working. Rather than stressing about the next day’s work list or unanswered questions of life, I try to replay old movies in my head. Sort of like watching TV — anything to fall back asleep. And it’s cheaper than cable.
I avoid tossing and turning — that just prompts another attack of vertigo. Yes, one more affliction of aging.
I stay away from more pillows to prop up my head — it aggravates the arthritis in my neck.
And I make it a point never to look at the clock. It would only stress me out more to know I had been asleep just two hours and still had an entire night of wakefulness in my future.
Maybe I should counter sleeplessness by thinking of all the great deals I can get on senior meals. Nah, that would just make me hungry. Who can sleep on a grouchy stomach.
Reader Comments(0)