Better with age?

Byron taught us in high school English lit class that "The days of thy youth are the days of thy glory." Ain't it the truth?

I found out in the early part of my twenties that I had some hearing loss. Not damage per say but loss due to continual allergy drainage and a clogged head.

By age 30 I saw this lone, scraggly, frizzy, albino hair peeling out of my brown tresses. He moved in and brought all of his kith and kin with him. "The White Family" now numbers about thirty strong and, like the descendants of Abraham, I think soon they will be too many to number. Did I mention they have an aversion to hair color? And they are "just as proud" (as Bill Cosby once said of his own collection). They stand straight and tall so everyone can see them. I tried plucking them one at a time but true to my mother's old wive's tale, two grew back in that place.

So lately my migraines have been increasing, despite being a frequent user of Maxalt and being on YAZ. I have tried to make sure I get enough sleep, have good lighting when I read, etc., but nothing really stops them. After over a year of almost weekly headaches, I decided it might be time to pay a visit to the eye doctor, mind you, JUST IN CASE I needed glasses, not that I did of course. My eyesight is stupendous. I could shoot an ant out of a tree down in the woods behind my house....well, okay, so that might be an exaggeration. But I can see a bird on a branch in a tree pretty far into our backyard.

My eye-doctor is super-nice. He knew I had an aversion to wearing glasses from the moment I walked in the door. He says I have 20/20 vision and my distance vision is excellent, but that my eyes are straining to do up-close work. So in I go to pick out my new "reading" glasses. I veered straight to the hip, trendy, silver-pink "chrome with mucho-blingage" glasses. Meanwhile, the poor man who was trying to help me, grabbed a different pair and said, "Why don't you try these on?" I did and turned to see my grandmother's face with cat's eye glasses looking back at me from the mirror. "Nice," he says. And you know what? Sadly enough, he was right.
In two days I go back to pick up my glasses, and then I'll officially look like all the girls from a 1950's yearbook.

To top things off, a few days ago I awoke from sleep with such an intense leg cramp in my left calf that it brought tears to my eyes. It actually left my leg sore for a few hours. I hobbled into Walgreens and went to look for Potassium pills as I was always told people experiencing cramps need more potassium. Along the way I discovered a pill especially formulated for leg cramps. I eagerly grabbed it and read: "Relieves leg cramping associated with lack of potassium and leg cramps experienced by the elderly."

After that I just turned and went home. Then I crawled into my favorite rocker, pulled my shawl around my thin shoulders (is it cold in here?) and squinted at the evening news through my faulty eyeballs. I'm suddenly craving prunes....

Maturely,
-Lynn