Why Age Gracefully

When there are so many other options!

Dear Friends,

It’s been another memorable year. The good, the bad and the droopy. Kinda happy to close the books on this one.

One day about half way through the year, I looked in the mirror and realized my face lift had started sagging. True, it’s been 8 years, but what the hell did I spend 20k for if it wasn’t to keep at least my face and neck eternally young? I could have bought half a Tesla for that. Or 8 years worth of moisturizers.

Then in August, my back started aching every day when I woke up, so I complained to Beautyrest that my year-old Sheraton mattress … the one that was so comfortable whenever I slept at a Sheraton hotel…was sagging. They were good enough to trade it in for a new one. But alas…my back aches every day with the replacement mattress as well. No one to blame now. My body is telling me something I don’t want to hear.

Why do I go to the gym every morning and lift weights and do planks and Roumanian Dead Drops if my back still hurts and the skin under my arms still sags? That’s not fair. I could have stayed in bed and played Wordle or Connections.

Well, I suppose I should be grateful (and keep my fingers crossed) that after 17 years, my titanium hips don’t give me any trouble. I may be getting close to their sell-by date, but so far, so good.

And then, of course, there were the months of anxiety about the election, and all those damn postcards I wrote to try to get voters to vote. Obviously, I got the wrong voters out. Or I sent the wrong message. A forest or two must have been felled to make the millions of postcards we sent out. And who knows if anyone voted because they got a multi-colored hand-written card in the mail. But at least we supported the flagging USPS by ordering a ton of postcard stamps.

I read today that many Latino voters are having regrets, realizing their spouses and parents may be deported, and some people are regretting, days after the election, that a 60% tariff on Chinese imports will raise the cost of their gaming consoles (their what?) by 40%.

Here’s some good news, though. For the first time since I retired, I bought some new shoes …rust orange boots, to be exact…instead of more Oofos or New Balance made-in-America 990s. (My feet hurt all the time unless I wear those.) I can’t even go barefoot anymore. Sharp pains shoot through the tops of my bare feet in case I forget. But if I tape up each toe individually, I can wear my new boots without pain or blisters for maybe 10 minutes or one city block (whichever is shorter.)

I haven’t looked at where my new orange boots are made, but I’m glad I bought them before the tariffs kicked in.

I can hardly wait to see what 2025 holds for us! Happy New Year!