Yes!

Over forty? You could DIE any minute now!

Yeah, a bit dramatic, I grant you. But I’ve just been reading Bill Bryson’s The Road to Little Dribbling, and apart from laughing a lot at his depictions of idiotic Americans on holiday and sour-faced English shop-keepers, I notice he refers to a lot of people who drop off the twig between about 40 and 55. Friends, acquaintances, random were-famous people, that kind of thing.

Course, you can die ANY time. I could’ve died when I was 19, strangled by some Italian psycho as I hitch-hiked around Europe with my pack and innocence. I could’ve died on an Australian highway, executing one of my notorious kamikaze driving moves in a (too frequent) moment of impulsive idiocy. I could’ve died of…god, lots of things!

But that would have been a bit of a fluke. From now on, death won’t be a fluke, it’ll be ‘rotten luck about Rose, but them’s the breaks’. It’ll be an inevitable – but not foreseeable – result of some part of me going rusty or losing a nut or wearing out its brake pads – like a stroke, or an aneurism, or galloping osteoporosis.

And it could happen AT ANY TIME!

So, what’s the plan?

Like the guy in ‘Yes Man’, we can choose between Totally Up for It and Just Say No.  I’ve become acutely conscious of this choice. Sometimes, I say No.

NO, I don’t want to go sky diving. I’ll take the aneurism. Physical danger is NOT fun for me – I leave that to people with the other gene.

NO, I don’t want to spend time learning to meditate. It’s boring. Bill Bryson makes me laugh, meditating makes me yawn.

NO, I don’t want to go to work any more. That is, I don’t want to, but right now I have to. But believe me I’m working on it. The last time I enjoyed having a boss was..let me see…in 1991. I am seriously over it.

On the other hand,

YES, I do want to watch a bit of mindless TV. I’ve spent most of my life going ‘Who’s Carrie?’ and ‘You’ve got to be kidding – cooking shows suck big time!’ at social occasions. Now it’s my time to be in the know. My Kitchen Rules. It’s even inspired me to try to make Crème Brulee, one day.

YES, I do want to dance in the lounge room with my superbly coordinated and expressive partner. I’ve waited my whole life to find someone who can match me in Weird Home Dancing, now I’ve found him, I’m using him. Up.

YES, I do want to throw my entire life away and move to some rural hideaway, despite the fact that I hate gardening, loathe farmers and have never spent more than the odd holiday in ‘the country’. But just because I’m not 19 any more doesn’t mean I don’t like taking stupid risks.

And lastly, YES, I do want to come and find my favourite blog friends like Darla and Mel and Trailer Trash and buy them a drink one day soon, on my way to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. It is SO going to happen. Before I have a stroke.

So what’s your number one Yes? Your absolute NO Frigging Way?