...It will cheer you up...

Now oddly enough, I've also gotten old enough to take the indignities with a dose of humor and appreciation. I know that means there's something wrong with me, but to me it's so clear that I outlived many of my worst fears that I am pretty relaxed about the aging part.

I'm just crabby that no one among my older friends, parishioners, and relatives had the guts to specify what some of the challenges would be, and only pissed and moaned about the totalituy of the aging thing. All they taught me was to be crabby about it! What I needed was information.

But I imagine that, any time now, today's aging standup comics will get around to some informative and hilarious routines about it, so the next generation can have their info that way. I'm just going to focus on telling our own kids what's in store, hopefully without scaring them silly about it.

I did pull that off with one of them-- she has some weight to lose and I told her what will happen to her skin elasticity after a certain age, so that if she waits until then to lose it, her potbelly skin will NOT snap back. That's my regret, if I have any myself-- that I let the mismanagement of several doctors put me past that age.

I am losing weight, and I know it's good for me, and I am NOT asking for help or sympathy with any of it-- but it's discouraging to know that if I lose as much as I could lose, now that I have the process working well, I will have trouble walking, from the skin left over. (Reconstructive surgery will not be an option.) So it's a choice I will have to make-- lose a lot more, or lose some but keep skin tone? And I told her about this in brief but graphic terms, so at least that's ONE person who has a chance to know better.

~Susan