getting old

Milestones

Posted on by thatsgettingold

Is it an aging thing, or are we more obsessed with milestones now than we’ve ever been?

“I’ve been working this job for 45 years,” people say.  Or, “I’ve gone a month without shaving!” (My kind of girl! LOL!) I think it’s because we love long streaks. No one gets excited when the factory sign says ‘1 day since an injury’ —  except, of course, the workers! But make it 138 days, and you’ve got a streak going. Then, if you get to 150, it’s a milestone!!

There are other kinds of milestones, too. I hear getting-old folks saying things like, “It’s been a year since I’ve had gluten,” or “I haven’t had a drink in nine years, six months, 14 days, three hours and 11 seconds … 12 …!”   (Hey, I don’t judge! But if you’re that on top of the count, I’d highly recommend sticking with the meetings!)

Well, I have reached a milestone that I would have thought to be virtually unattaiinable, like Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak. My beautiful wife Carrie and I are celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary this weekend! (In lieu of cards, please make your checks payable to the Long Island Home for the Really, Really, REALLY Insane.”)

If you would have asked me on our wedding day how long we’d be together, I’d probably have wisecracked, “I hope we make it through the dessert.” But who DOES know? We’ve been blessed to have each other to hold onto for this long, and my hope is that we have another 100 years together. It’s been joyful, maddening, blissful, combative, hilarious, scary… and perfect! That’s what a marriage is. But most of all, it’s been the best life I could have imagined!

We met through a personal ad I placed in the newspaper, and she sent a photo that blew me away. She was beautiful (still is!). I must have asked a million times, why would a girl like this have to meet someone through a personal ad? (In an unfortunate circumstance, the photo she sent was taken under a sign that read, “Golden Nugget, Las Vegas.” My father’s radar sounded the alert. “She’s a gambler. You’re going to have to watch your money with this one,” he said. I was working nights on the newspaper copy desk. “WHAT money, Pop???”)

Right away, we got off on the wrong foot. She only agreed to go out with me on a first date because “Dynasty,” her favorite prime-time TV soap, was pre-empted. And she reminds me of that to this day! On our second date, she made me get a telephone answering machine. I think it was because coming over to my apartment to tell me what to do was too much work, so this way, she could simply leave messages telling me what to do. And somehow, I allowed that to happen. What can I say… I was already falling in love. And within a week, I was housebroken, just the way she liked. (Full disclosure: I liked it too!)

What makes a marriage work? I don’t have the secret, but I think it has to do with being able to put up with each other. She has schtick like you wouldn’t believe. She won’t go outside in the summer because of bugs, brings her own sheets and towels to hotels because… uch! She makes us all wear hoodies in the house in winter because she’s too hot and won’t turn up the thermostat, and there’s no food in my house from Memorial Day to Labor Day. (“Sorry, summer schedule!”) My schtick? Also lots. But to sum it up, I refer you to the cover photo of this blog. That’s me in my natural state. “Don’t you have anything to do today?” she’ll say. “Paint? Powerwash? How about just putting your shoes away?” “I’ll get to it later, hon. There’s a movie on right now that I want to watch for the 97th time!” Oh, and also, no matter where I am in the world, I can guarantee you that I am somehow in her way.

Yet we put up with it.

We’ve raised three beautiful, remarkable girls together in our “starter house,” which is looking more and more like our “ender house” too! So long as it’s filled with love and laughter, I don’t care what you call it. I call it the only place I really want to be.

Here’s to us, Kitty! I am still so crazy about you!

 

 

 

Waiting for Lotto

Posted on by thatsgettingold

Have you seen those financial planning commercials that line people up on a big field and they walk forward to the age they think they’re going to live, but a big rubber band stops them at the point they’re going to run out of money? Most of them come up well short of their life expectancy.

Poor bastards! How will they live? This sent me scurrying to look at my retirement position, and I’m pleased to report that I’ll be fine until I reach the age of 47.  Hmmmm … that can’t be right!

But there is a way to beat that system, and — to quote Capt. James T. Kirk  — “I … have … a … plan!”

My wife — let’s call her “Carrie” — has assumed the usual position of skeptic when it comes to me having it all figured out.

“You have a plan,” she says, half-mocking, half-disgusted. (Not an easy tone to pull off, but she’s a pro!)

“Why yes. Yes, I do.”

“OK, let’s hear your brilliant plan.”

“You want to hear my plan.”

“Come on, let’s hear the plan.”

“You want to hear my plan.”

I don’t remember much after that, because a frying pan blow to the head will make you lose your train of thought, and, in many cases, consciousness.

But I do have a plan. And I’ll share it with you now.

I’m going to win the lottery.

People win the lottery all the time. It’s gotta be my turn sooner or later, right? I mean, the odds grow more in my favor with each passing torn-up ticket, right?

I have given this way more thought than I should. Somehow, I’ve become totally fixated on winning the lottery. For example:

HEADLINE: Sexual predator wins $3 million in lottery

(From USA Today, Dec. 11, 2014 … no lie!):
A convicted sexual predator is now a rich man after winning $3 million on a Florida Lottery scratch-off ticket.

Timothy Poole, 43, purchased the ticket Saturday night at a convenience store in Mount Dora, near Orlando, TV station WKMG reports.

Poole was arrested in 1999 on a charge of sexually battering a 9-year-old boy, a member of a family whose home he had once lived in, the TV station reported.  Poole denied the charges but eventually pleaded guilty to attempted sexual battery and was sentenced to the 13 months he had already served in jail.

Blah blah blah … (my edits)

A friend told the TV station he was with Poole when he learned he had won.

“He was flabbergasted. He couldn’t believe it,” Floyd Snyder said.

#  # #

Neither could I. No one knows when or where the Fickle Finger of Fortune will bless someone with its touch, but … this guy? He cops a plea of sexual battery of a young boy and gets a $3 million reward. I don’t win a thing, EVER, and I’ve never hurt a fly (except when my wife literally goes straight to DEFCON 1 when she sees one.) “A BUG! KILL IT! KILL IT!  UNNH-HUH-HUH-HUH…HUFF-PHEW-HUFF-PHEW-HUFF-HUFF.. WHY ARE YOU SO SLOW?? IT’S OVER THERE NOW! KILL IT!!  (Thwack!)  YOU MISSED IT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!!  AAARRHHHHH!!!

The sexual predator gets three million dollars, and I get this.

What a world!

 

Hello Clarice!

Posted on by thatsgettingold

You know what’s getting old? Getting punched and kicked all night long by a wife who CLAIMS you snore too much! I called her out on it, and she had the audacity to produce a recording of what she said was me snoring. “You downloaded that from some website,” I countered. She denied it. “I’m going to record YOU snoring.. it’s YOU waking YOURSELF up! And I’m going to punch and kick YOU all night long.”

So you see, it’s still open for debate.

I went to my doctor. (Are we sensing a recurring theme here? But this isn’t really about the doctor. It’s about marital relations!)

The doc said I should have a sleep evaluation. I wanted to be clear on this. “So, I come in here and just sleep? SIGN ME UP!” And then, the results were in. Severe sleep apnea. For the restful, apneas are when you stop breathing while sleeping because the airway in your throat gets blocked by your lazy-ass tongue.

So now, I have a shiny new medical device on my nightstand, right where my porn used to be. It’s a full facial mask connected by a long hose to a machine that forces pressurized air into my face all night long. Picture trying to sleep with a leaf blower crammed into your mouth. You’re basically gasping all night, because it takes all the strength you can muster while trying to sleep just to exhale against that wind.

But I gotta tell ya… chicks dig it! (Especially the part about the long hose!) No, just kidding about that part. It’s no fun for either me or my wife.

First of all, the mask doesn’t always fit right. Air squeaks out the side, or blows out of the top, forcing air into your eyes. Try sleeping while blinking 100 times a minute! SO restful!!  I find that I actually sleep less now than I did before. But at least, as they say, it’s a DRY sleep.

And then there’s the hose. I’m not the kind of guy who lays down in the bed and wakes up in the exact same position the next morning, so as I toss and turn, I spend the night wrestling to get it away from my neck, or out from under my face, or somehow squashed into my ear! It’s like a boa constrictor patiently, methodically squeezing the life out of me each and every night.

There is a fun side… the muffled sound I can emit when I roll to my right and wheeze at the missus… “wanna fool around?” I tell her I’d like to have her, right then and there … like Hannibal Lechter, with some fava beans and a nice chianti!

Invariably, the answer is no.

 

JUST KEEP SCROLLING!!dory6

Buds for Buds

Posted on by thatsgettingold

Remember back in high school, when the cool kids had fake IDs made up so they could purchase alcohol while still underage?

Flash forward to today. The rage among sixty-somethings is the Medical Marijuana ID card. I can’t believe how many people have them … or that I don’t!! When I first saw it, I said to my friend, “How’d you get that?” He reminded me of his full-body rheumatoid arthritis, and I nodded my understanding.

When another friend this weekend showed me his ID card, I was flummoxed. That’s right, flummoxed, I tell ya. And flabbergasted. I was flummoxed AND flabbergasted!

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. How in the world did you qualify for a Medical Marijuana ID card?”

“Easy,” he replied. “I told my doctor I can’t sleep.”

“That’s it? You said you can’t sleep?”

“Yep. That’s it.” I still was flabbergasted, but flummoxed no longer.

“So how are you sleeping?”

“Like a frickin’ baby. Always did!”

How many of us sleep well in the “aging population” demographic? Not many. So, if a hit on a bong, a toke on a pipe, or a draw on a vape pen gets you through the night, it’s all right… it’s all right.

But all this got me to thinking. Here’s a data point I found on the Internet, so it must be true: The number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to more than double from 46 million today to over 98 million by 2060, and the 65-and-older age group’s share of the total population will rise to nearly 24 percent from 15 percent.

Here’s another data point I’ve Googled: Northwestern Mutual’s 2018 Planning & Progress Study, which surveyed 2,003 adults, found that 78 percent of Americans say they’re ‘extremely’ or ‘somewhat’ concerned about not having enough money for retirement. Another 66 percent believe that they’ll outlive their retirement savings. A shocking 21 percent of Americans have nothing at all saved for the future, and another 10 percent have less than $5,000 socked away for their golden years, the study found.

Now, I’m not here to advocate for marijuana use, legality, or anything else. But do the math. You’re going to go broke, and your peers are clamoring for pain relief. It’s likely you’re not a chemist, and don’t have a lab to start producing Percocet and Xanax. (If you are, and do, message me privately!)  But you likely have a garden. For the cost of some seed, you too can become a Little Organic Pharma (that’s how we say farmer here on Long Island)! You’ll augment your paltry savings while helping to end the suffering of tens of your friends, or business networking pretend-friends, or whoever you’re running with (ahem.. walking with) these days.

No need to thank me. Keep on truckin’!

 

Ya gotta have heart

Posted on by thatsgettingold

I began this website as kind of a way to look at the funny things about getting older…forgetting basically every name I ever knew, not to mention song titles, movie actors and more. Now I watch ‘Jeopardy’ and instead of beating the contestants to the answers, I go, ‘Oh, right, I know this…’ but of course can’t come up with it.

Then something really scary happened to me a few months back. As the proud owner of three cardiac stents, I went for a routine nuclear stress test (talk about your oxymorons!). I was confident. “I feel great, no problems here,” I thought to myself. “I’m gonna kill it.” It turned out it almost killed me!!

As I’m walking on the treadmill, with the incline growing higher and the speed increasing, the operator says, ‘Can you go 30 more seconds?’ I go, ‘piece of cake’ – ‘cause I really wanted a piece of cake — and I kick it into high gear. Suddenly, though, the operator stops the test, injects something into my arm and the cardiologist comes in and says he’s calling an ambulance to take me to the hospital. “What? Why?,” I asked. Something about ventricular tachycardia. I had to look it up too.

He showed me the EKG from the test. Imagine if you gave a 3-year-old a crayon and told the kid to just draw anything. That was my EKG.

Now, after three days in the hospital, I am the proud owner of FOUR stents and a defibrillator/pacemaker combo package. Two for one…such a deal!

And also now, the medical people have my attention.

You see, for me, one of the things that makes you feel old is when you can’t eat that piece of chocolate cake anymore, or the bacon cheeseburger deluxe with French fries AND onion rings! Or that greasy pizza with pepperoni. You never see old people eating this stuff (at least not the smart ones!) They eat fish, and vegetables and drink water. To steal the punchline from an old joke: “and such small portions!”

Another is when you finally drop all the weight they tell you to, and people now look at you and gasp, and whisper out of earshot (which is now about an inch and a half), “Is he sick?” I yell, “WHAT???”

Yet worst of all is when family and friends stop letting you do anything. “Put down those folding chairs; I’ll have the kids carry them downstairs.” Or, “leave the suitcase. I’ll put it in the overhead bin for you.” Or, “Am I walking too fast for you?”

A doctor friend of mine called this being a “cardiac cripple.”

For me, I feared that giving in to their way of thinking would make me feel old. The hardest part of all this has been the mental, not the physical. I never had pain, never felt bad. But you naturally start to question yourself. Am I no longer the vibrant guy I was? Do people look at me differently now, as somehow being more frail? Can I still do most of what I used to do?

I’m here to tell you the answer to the last question above is YES! My doctor said I could return to 75 percent of what I did before until I healed up and rested up more. (Did someone just tell me to rest??  Did you hear that, dear? My doctor said I have to REST!!  And no more snow shoveling!! Be careful out there!)

As for getting back to what I did before, some quick math revealed that 75 percent of lying on the couch is STILL lying on the couch! I felt better already!

So I’ll skip the burger meals, cut down on sugars and carbs, but I WON’T start eating dinner at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I put on a button-down shirt, tie and blazer to take a walk in the mail! A white belt?? Kill me now!!

We ARE, after all, getting older. But we don’t have to give in to it. You’re as young as you feel. While physically the age thing is starting to be a pain – well, more than one — I take solace in knowing that mentally, I’m still the same stupid 12-year-old I’ve always been!

<Fart sound here>

Forgetful much??

Posted on by thatsgettingold

You’re not going to believe it, but there’s a great reason for the enormous gap in time between my first post and this one.

I FORGOT THE NAME OF MY OWN BLOG!!

I hadn’t written it down, and for the life of me, I couldn’t think of what I called it! Well, the good news is, now I’m back.

But I can’t remember what I wanted to write about!

I DO remember when my folks started getting old, and listening to them trying to piece a conversation together: “What was that movie? You know, the one with the gal who starred in all those westerns..”

“Barbra Stanwyck?”

“No.. you know, she was married to that actor who always played bad guys…”

“Edward G. Robinson?”

“No.. oh, come on, you know, they got a divorce and she married that British actor — always a leading man…”

“Oh, I know who you mean. He played that spy in that picture with the guy with that hat?”

“Who?”

“The spy guy.”

“Was he even real?”

“Who, the actor or the spy?”

“Oh, never mind. It’ll come to me at 2 a.m. when I’m sleeping.”

“Good. Do me a favor … don’t wake me up!”

Today, my kids laugh hysterically at my wife and I doing the exact same thing. Frankly, I no longer see the humor.