It has begun

Hey, guess what? Middle age is quickly overtaking me, in small and amusing ways. I’m not anxious about my age (she said, pre-emptively), but I have noticed a distinct slide into thoughts and actions that I associate with my parents. Want to hear them?

1. I’ve recently begun sorting the recycling and taking out the garbage on Sunday afternoons (for Monday morning pickup). This used to be a grumbly, late-night, about-to-go-to-bed-and-argh-we-forgot-the-recycling-again kind of chore. Now, I just do it before dinner. At 3pm, it’s an astonishingly trivial task.

2. If I don’t moisturize, my face feels like it will crack.

3. I like to make plans well in advance. I even get a bit funny if friends say, “Oh, I might pop round on Monday sometime.” My inner old lady is muttering, “Well, ARE you or AREN’T you? And at WHAT TIME?”

4. I’m reading more non-fiction than ever.

Right now, I’m really enjoying Vic Gatrell’s The First Bohemians, which was recommended to me by my friend Keri Walsh. She’s a professor at Fordham University, which brings me to my next point:

5. I meet someone and think, “Wow, s/he’s awfully young to be a psychiatrist/school principal/professor.” A second later, I realize, Nope. S/he’s just my age.

6. I can’t visually distinguish between people in their early 20s and people in their late 20s. They all look young to me.

7. I don’t understand the beard resurgence. Or the man bun.

8. I have a 3-month supply of toilet paper in the house right now.

How about you, friends? How are you resisting or embracing the passage of time?