Tag Archives: aging

Shit in a box…

Posted on by

I’m not going to lie, one of the things that has changed unexpectedly since I turned 45 has been how often I’m required to shit in a box… for science. Admittedly, the total number of times that’s happened in the last 15 months is twice, but that is exactly two times more often than it happened in the previous 45 years, so it feels like a significant deviation from the norm. 

The first of these experiences was to check for any underlying gastrointestinal issues causing my acid reflux. The second was as a screening tool for early detection of colon cancer. Both are worthy objectives and I support the goal entirely. That doesn’t make it any less weird when you have to spend some part of your morning packaging up your own shit and then driving it over to the nearest UPS store. There’s something intensely surreal about the whole process.

Despite the warnings that “things change after you hit 40,” I’ll admit I was entirely unprepared for some of what that was going to entail. In some ways, regularly shitting in a box and then posting it off for someone else to analyze is, perhaps, not even the strangest part of this brave new phase of life. I’m equal parts curious and terrified of whatever comes next.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Questionable aesthetic decisions. I drive past the house I rented when I first got back to Maryland every couple of weeks. I was dumbfounded to find that the current owner ripped off the large deck and planted a prefab garage in its place. It’s not just something simple that compliments the size of the house. Oh no. It’s a massive thing that overshadows the house completely. It doesn’t just look out of proportion with the property. but completely out of character for the neighborhood. It’s the kind of thing I’d lose my mind over if I had to look at it from next door. HOAs aren’t always ideal, but there’s absolutely a reason I’m ok with my local committee having to chop on any project that would alter the front facing profile of the houses here in my current hood. They may be the devil, but they’re the devil that will keep a neighbor from plunking down a massive steel building in their front yard. Sometimes that just has to be good enough.

2. Being old people. I unexpectedly found myself in attendance at a concert last Thursday. I couldn’t help but notice, when looking around the venue, that I was surrounded by “old people.” Old people who also knew that Chris Barron was the lead singer for Spin Doctors, a band who cut a swath through the early 1990s, and who remember his biggest two or three songs playing nonstop on radio and MTV. As it turns out it’s me. I’m “old people.” It was an unsettling moment of realization, even if sharing a very small venue with a guy whose music marked a pretty significant period in your life was a decidedly cool experience.

3. Self-denial. I’ve learned, over the last year, to go about the day in some varied state of hunger. Some days, I barely think about eating and don’t notice it. Other days, though, all I want to do is gorge on anything I can possibly get my hands on. Those days are the absolute worst, because falling off my particular wagon is no more than a quick walk to the refrigerator or pantry away. Self-denial has never been one of my unique gifts, so on days when hunger really sets in, it’s an all-day fist fight. They don’t hit as often as the used to, but when they show up, damned if they’re not brutal. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Morale building activities. Our office seems determined that it’s going to lick the morale problem by doubling down on potluck lunches and after-hours team building events. I invite you to piss directly off with that nonsense. If you want me to be part of a team activity, schedule that mess while you’re paying me for it. And damned well don’t expect me to cook (or inflict my colleagues cooking on me) in order to participate. Why the hell we can’t just take an hour or two, get out of the office, and patronize a local restaurant like normal people is completely beyond me. It’s all a hard pass for me. If that reinforces my rep as a non-joiner or problematic player of team ball, so be it.

2. Late night interruptions. The number of times each week I wake up at two in the morning to take a piss, spend an hour flopping around not sleeping, and then drifting off for an hour or so of absolutely ridiculous dreams before waking up to start the day bleary eyed and disgruntled is something of a too regular occurrence. It’s not every night, which would drive me batshit crazy, but it’s easily once every week or two and that makes it more than regular enough to be obnoxious. There’s a whole level of frustration knowing you can’t hold your water or fall back asleep on command the way you used to. Most other nights I still manage to sleep like a baby, but not knowing whether the night will be restful or ridiculous is just short of infuriating.

3. Protests. I’ve always looked slightly askance at protestors as a group. Clogging up sidewalks, roadways, or parks and making a spectacle / nuisance of yourself never seemed like a good way to make any kind of point. Once I started working in DC, I developed an even lower opinion of the average “protestor.” Inconveniencing me as I’m just trying to go about my daily activities is, I promise you, no way to ever convince me of the virtue of your cause. In any case, any time I see news of protestors getting all froggy – whether it’s on city streets or on college campuses – I just get preemptively annoyed and assume they’re chanting and occupying whatever for some cause I’ll inevitably think is foolish. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Metrics. One of the things the medicos have had me doing for the last six months is a much more frequent bit of at home tracking. Blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, everything gets tracked. It’s a fine bit of trivia and something that could theoretically be helpful for them, but all it seems to have done for me is generate a new obsession and a lot of fresh anxiety when a rogue value pops up or I see an unanticipated trend develop. While I don’t dispute the value of knowing a more granular level of detail, I can tell you with certainty that even though I was certainly less healthy six months ago than I am now, I absolutely felt better before I knew any of the specifics.

2. Time. By my calculation, it should be December 29th. Somehow, though, the calendar says it’s February 2nd. That can’t possibly be right, can it? I don’t know exactly the age I was when time started to speed up, but I seem to be noticing it speed by at an almost alarming pace these days. Oddly, it doesn’t make the work days seem any shorter, but the pace of moving from one week to the next is getting quite out of hand. I have no idea how one cuts back on the throttle there, but something must be done.

3. Taxes. I switched my Roth IRA from one institution to another this year. During the transition, I managed to add in about $50 more than is allowable by law. The penalty, if left uncorrected, is something like a 6% fine for every year the extra money remains in the account. It was easy enough to fix with a call to the company who holds the account, but the real absurdity is how little our common Uncle Sam will allow you to put away to grow for untaxed future withdrawals. There are articles posted regularly decrying how the Average American will be woefully unprepared for retirement. It seems to me that one way to get after that issue would be to dramatically increase the amount that people can legally shelter from the long arm of the tax man.

This is 45…

Posted on by

I’m not sure I feel 45. Then again, I don’t know what 45 is supposed to feel like. Aside from the accrued aches and pains, I still feel like the me that existed at 20 or 25. Somehow, I feel like it should be even more adultier than usual. That could just be a mental block on my part. I’ve been running my own household since I left home at 22, so the basic tasks of being a law abiding citizen haven’t changed all that much.

I’ve never been one to make a spectacle of my birthday. Being the center of attention in a room full of well-wishers (or full of any kind of people, really), sounds like a dreadful way to spend a day that’s supposed to be celebratory. My day, very intentionally, was a low key affair. The house cleaner was here in the morning. I went out for a crab cake lunch and then did a bit of local junking. I expect I’ll be fast asleep, with the sounds of a snoring dog and cats doing cat things in the background, not long after (or maybe even a touch before) it gets dark on this long June evening.

I’d be remiss here if I didn’t thank everyone who took the time to text, DM, post, or call with their well wishes today. As ever, I appreciate your continued thoughtfulness as I begin another year riding this rock, orbiting its sun, racing through the Milky Way, while moving through the known universe at something like 228 miles per second. You’ve all been very kind to take a few minutes out of that mayhem and chaos to be a part of my day. Taking all things into account, it was as perfectly pleasant a day as I could reasonably hope to enjoy – and I’ll happily take all of those I can.

Aging and other inconveniences…

Posted on by

This week, I’ve had an appointment with my dermatologist and two physical therapy sessions. Next week I’m back at PT for two more rounds. The week after that it’s an appointment with my primary care doc. Three weeks from now it’s a follow-up with the dermatologist. Then, four weeks from now, I’ll turn 44. 

I’m not saying all those things are in any way related, but I can’t help but feel like there is, perhaps, a vague connection between the never-ending parade of doctor’s appointments and the increasing number of times I’ve been around the sun. None of these appointments are for critical care issues. Just a bevy of regular appointments, follow-ups, and treating some minor issues.

My inner historian can’t help but note that our caveman ancestors right up through our dark age predecessors had a life expectancy of about 35 years. From the Tudor era right through the dawn of the industrial age, expectancy creeped up to almost 40 years. Over the last 200 years, expectancy has raced upward into the low to middle 70s. So yeah, we’ve managed to eliminate or at least mostly control many of the common causes of early death – ranging from accidents to disease – but we’re still walking around in meat suits that evolved over millennia with the expectation to get no more than 35-40 years of service.

From that perspective, it’s not hard to understand why there are occasionally bits and bobs that aren’t working quite right or how waking up in the morning so often reveals a new and unexpected pain somewhere. Sitting here looking at 44, I’m well past my warrantee date and from here on out will apparently need increasingly skilled mechanics to keep the whole thing cobbled together and running tolerably well.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here reading reviews on hyperbaric chambers and researching gene therapy.

Hella Mega…

Posted on by

Aging comes with some penalties. Sometimes body parts hurt for no apparent reason. There’s the indignity of bifocals and waking up in the middle of the night to take a wiz. Electronics are getting to be just a little too complicated. 

Whatever. In addition to the penalties, aging also comes with a few underrated perks. Twenty-year-old me usually couldn’t scape together the $20 or $30 for nose bleed tickets let alone the gas money to drive to wherever the concert was happening. Now, though, I’ve arrived at the age where I can finally see many of the bands I wanted desperately to see 20 years ago… and now I can get really good seats.

Even in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime plague, the chance to see Green Day and Weezer on the same bill proved too tempting to resist. I’m awfully mindful that this will be my first trip out into the plague lands into anything that could be remotely considered crowded. I’ve been bitching these last eighteen months about people who refuse to believe in science, so I suppose it’s a case of walking the talk. We’re outside, I’m vaccinated, and my risk of severe illness or death as a result of showing up here is low. Still, crowds make me vaguely uncomfortable to begin with. The plague adds several extra layers to that.

Once the music starts, though, I’m relatively confident I’ll be able to silence that little nagging voice in my head. So much of these band’s “best of” catalog plays out as the background music of my teens and twenties. I’m not one to say high school and college were the best years of my life, but I do have an awful lot of fond memories from back there and back then. These guys were playing the music that underlayers so many of those good times. 

So here I sit, eighth row, slightly left of center, behind the pit (because I’m damned well too old for trading sharp elbows for position and I like to have a tolerably comfortable place to sit down to rest my aching feet between sets).

It’s going to be a very rare late night for me – certainly the first time I’ll be awake to see one day change to the next in at least two years. If the weather holds (and I don’t end up with the damned plague), it’ll be worth it… though you might not want to ask me about it tomorrow when I inevitably wake up at 4:30 in the morning no matter what time I finally crawl into bed.

Sleeping arrangements…

Posted on by

Maggie slept on my bed at night for most of her adult life until fairly recently. Usually over the course of the night she’d find her way to the floor and sometimes fine her way bac to the bed sometime in the early hours of the morning. A few times I’ve had to lift her up since her days of making the jump on her own seem to be over. In the last couple of months, she’s opted to stay put at floor level. I suspect getting herself back down for a late-night patrol was getting to be as hard on her joints as jumping up to the bed was. 

I’ve offered up steps and ramps, but even when lured with treats she doesn’t seem to have an interest. I’m not going to force the issue, so I suppose this is just the new normal night time arrangement. 

As much as I don’t miss the nightly barrage of dog breath and farting, there’s definitely part of me that misses the convoluted positions I’d need to get myself into so she could sprawl. I miss the regular head butts requesting a few more ear scratches before sleep came on.

Everyone trips over themselves to post cute puppy pictures and talk about the challenges housebreaking and training. Not many talk about the unique and often more trying experiences of making home comfortable for an aging dog. I guess those posts don’t translate as well to social media. They certainly don’t garner as many awws and likes. I have to think if more people did have those discussions, it would help an awful lot of people be better prepared for some of the harder moments of pet ownership. 

On dogs that go thump in the night…

Posted on by

I don’t regret anything about my life with dogs. Sure, I wish vet bills were lower and the floor wasn’t constantly covered in shed fur, but on balance, I’d much rather have a house filled with dogs than a house filled with people. Even with that preference, that’s not to say there aren’t moments where I wonder what the hell we’re about.

Sunday morning, at our usual well before dawn wake up time, Maggie took a header while transitioning from the bedroom carpet to the living room wood. She was fully splayed – exactly like something you might see in a cartoon – with one paw slid out in each of the cardinal directions. She tried to get up, fell back down, tried again, and fell again. You’ll never convince me dogs don’t emote. Her face was the perfect picture of embarrassment and feeling sorry for herself. 

I was able to scoot her towards one of the area rugs, where I hoped her scrambling might find some purchase… and also where she would be less likely to tear the hell out of the floor. Look, I’m as big a dog lover as anyone, but that doesn’t mean I want to destroy the house in the process. Fortunately, with the rug giving a bit of extra traction, she slowly managed to get her feet under her. 

Mag’s has had a weak front right ankle for years. I have no idea what caused the original injury, but every so often she pulls up lame and refuses to do more than balance using that paw. She spent most of the rest of the day hobbling around the house. That’s no mean feat when you realize how much of the place is covered with wood, tile, or basically surfaces just made to slide on. 

By last night she was getting around fairly well. This morning was more of the same, so I’m hoping she’s on the mend without needing an unscheduled trip to the vet. 

My girl is going on 13 this year. She’s already far exceeded the average life expectancy of a dog following a Cushing’s diagnosis. Add in the two most recent rounds of violent digestive illness and I’m surprised (and a little impressed) that she’s still getting around at all. I know she’s not indestructible or immortal, but I could have done without yesterday’s reminder of just how elderly she really is.

I’m not sure there’s really a point to this post, aside from telling you to give your critters an extra pat on the head or chin scratch tonight. You’ll be glad you did.

Perfectly unremarkable…

Posted on by

It’s been a perfectly unremarkable Friday. The freezing drizzle and fog this morning was a nice touch… and just another reason why working from home is greater than working at the office. Otherwise, the day isn’t really distinguished in any way.

I’ve built a lovely cocoon for myself here at Fortress Jeff. With a few minor exceptions there’s not much I want to do that I can’t do here from the comfort of the homestead. Whether it’s plague, foul weather, or violent insurrection, I’m ready to ride it out right here with the critters. 

True end of the world stuff is another matter, but in fairness, I’ve grown rather fond of civilization and I’m not entirely sure I want to be one of those people who get to stick around and pick through its ruins.

Where you stand depends on where you sit, I suppose. There was a time I was the first to volunteer to fly off to whatever job needed doing and I rarely thought of what might be happening beyond the next weekend. Back there and back then, I could barely stay put for half a day before needing to be up and out on the next thing. The older I get, though, the more stock I put on the world being regulated by good order and discipline. Chaos, in the wide universe of things best avoided, is the one I loath the most.

I can’t control the world, of course, but I can control a fair amount of what happens here on my little piece of it… so I’ll be striving to extend this run of “unremarkable” as far past Friday as possible.