Day 67: Resolution numero uno

I just counted up the days since my 59th birthday and came to realize I was a bit off in naming these posts. As of this one, I'm back on track.

About that resolution ...

I had my annual physical yesterday, and the cholesterol news was, um, pretty awful. In fact, it was the worst it's ever been. Note to self: Never again have my cholesterol level tested at Christmas time.

At least I don't have to come up with New Year's resolutions. It's pretty obvious what they should be: Eat smarter, exercise more and get my cholesterol levels down.

Luckily, I have no other risk factors -- at least none that seem to be of concern to my doctor. He's giving me six months to change my ways. I'll have more blood tests then, followed by a meeting with him.

I get the feeling this will be my last chance to avoid taking statins for the rest of my life.

Day 49: Christmas Eve 2009

On Christmas Eve we light all the candles -- the ones in the Advent wreath, the ones in the sconces on the living room wall, the green one we've lit every Christmas Eve since we were married. This is our 30th Christmas together -- and the candle, one of those tall, pillar types -- hasn't burned even halfway down yet. As the love of my life put it, we'd better live a really long time or that candle will go to waste.

We got the idea from my parents, who would light a small, green candle at 6 p.m. every Christmas Eve, then blow it out moments later lest it disappear altogether. There was still a scrap of it left the Christmas before my dad died.

I hope we do live a long time, not only to watch our candle gradually disappear but to keep on growing, keep on experiencing new things, keep on sharing our traditions with our family.

And I hope tomorrow brings, to all of you who celebrate Christmas, the simple joy of being with the people you love.

Day 48: Gravy days

I just came across a line in a book by NPR reporter Eric Weiner titled "The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World." At this point in the book he's been interviewing people in Slough, England, generally considered to be one of Earth's unhappier places (though apparently not nearly as unhappy as Moldova).

Weiner comes to the conclusion that when you reach a certain point in your life -- say, middle age -- every day you're given is pure gravy. You wake up in the morning and get another shot at getting it right, at finding happiness. Pure gravy.

I read this just hours after I'd read about the death of yet another high school classmate. That makes four that I know of this year -- four out of the 200 or so of us who made up the Class of '68. We are, it seems, dropping like flies.

But I'm still here and feeling especially grateful to be. Grateful for these gravy days.

Day 47: Would you like nuts with that?

My grandmother lived on coffee, Ritz crackers and chocolate -- with an occasional nip from one of the little bottles of brandy and water she kept hidden around her home in case she had a bout of angina.

She lived to be almost 94.

I thought of her today as I munched on a grilled cheese sandwich in a little cafe near Ithaca, N.Y. At the counter stood a tiny, slightly stooped woman who had to be well past 80. She waited patiently while the handful of people in line ahead of her placed their orders. Then she waited patiently while her own order was filled.

A few minutes later, she turned and walked toward me carrying, with all the care of a little kid pressed into ring-bearer duty, an ice cream sundae piled high with whipped cream.

Early this morning, I had to have some blood work done in anticipation of my annual physical. I dread the thought of how high my cholesterol figures will be when my doctor goes over my test results with me. The news is usually not good -- at least, not in the "lipids" department.

I wondered about the old woman with the ice cream sundae. Does she have naturally low cholesterol levels? Does she have a death wish?

This much I do now: She was beaming like a little kid who had just been given, well, a dish of ice cream piled high with whipped cream.

I hope she enjoyed every single bite.

Day 45, I think ...

My mother-in-law and her husband paid us brief visit this weekend. I marvel at her youth. She is, in fact, the youngest 84-year-old I know -- my role mode for aging.

I credit her positive attitude for her youthful outlook on life. If there are words she lives by, they're "All will be well." Somehow, when I hear her say it I believe it's true.

No, she doesn't walk 2 miles a day or participate in marathons. But she lives life fully and actively, with a strong faith in God and an equally strong belief that you have to get out there and be useful. More good words to live by.

The two of them blew into town Friday evening after driving 500 miles and left less than 40 hours later for another three-hour drive to the next set of relatives. They will continue to make the rounds of loved ones straight through Christmas.

I heard my mother-in-law tell her sister as they chatted on the phone yesterday that traveling, especially in winter, takes a lot out of them. This might, she said, be their "swan song" trip.

Knowing her, knowing her sense of adventure and love of family, I doubt it.

Day 42 (43 and 44): Reinventing ourselves

Do we have to? Reinvent ourselves, I mean?

I keep running into that word, "reinventing," sometimes in reference to people whose jobs have disappeared in the recession, sometimes in reference to people pushing 60 -- and beyond -- deciding to chuck the careers they've stuck with for decades to explore new options.

I'm feeling a little peer pressure here.

I'm not sure whether I'm in a rut or that I simply like what I do, but I don't have a strong desire to chuck it all and start a new career. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm not really equipped to start a new career, not without some serious retraining.

And that's where I keep bumping into this notion that it might be just a wee bit late for me to be starting over.

I wish I were one of those people who look to the future without fear of failure, who see in every new day an opportunity to experience something new, who believe in their ability to reinvent themselves. But I'm not. I'm one of those people who plays it safe.

Maybe next lifetime ...

Day 41: Of all the things I've lost ...

... I miss my mind the most.

OK, that line isn't original with me, but it sums up my frustration with those memory lapses -- aka "senior moments" -- that leave me wondering how I could possibly forget the things I forget.

Like meetings, appointments, where I put my keys, my glasses, my wallet, our checkbook ... or writing a new post for this blog.

I marvel at my mother's ability to recall details of the year she lived in New York City. She was 5 at the time. Ninety-two years later, she can tell you about her kindergarten, the blackout curtains on the windows (this was during World War I), the oil from a sunken German submarine that soiled a beach and stained her white kid-leather shoes.

I can't remember what I had for dinner two nights ago.

Not that I care about that, but I do care that I can't remember where I stashed some important papers that I was SURE I had put on my desk. Or maybe in a file folder somewhere.

A friend used to say that she always put her important papers in a single drawer. Then she lost the drawer.

Sounds better than saying you're just plain losing it.

Day 40: News to me

Every time I hear someone say the newspaper industry is on life support and not expected to survive, I swear I can hear my bones creak.

I spent a long time, maybe too long, working for a newspaper and have, for far longer, been a newspaper reader. I credit my parents for that. Two dailies -- the local paper and the Cleveland Plain Dealer -- were delivered to our home when I was a kid. I took pride in how well I did on the weekly current events quiz that ran in my local paper.

And like many people of a certain age, I cannot imagine mornings without a newspaper in my hands. I've tried reading the morning news online, taking care not to drip milk from my cereal bowl on the keyboard, but it's just not the same.

Geez, I sound like an old coot. But even some younger "coots" I know agree that it would be difficult to do without a daily paper.

This weekend, after a long stretch in the same building, the newspaper where I worked for more than 30 years is moving. The building's been sold, and the paper will lease space in a building a few miles from its current site. I'm one of several people who were let go this year in yet another attempt to keep the paper afloat.

Sad as I am to no longer be a part of it, I wish the paper well. I don't like change -- and I would hate to lose something that's as much a part of my morning as that bowl of cereal.

Day 39: The good news ...

My aging eyes got a thorough examination this week. And though I definitely need stronger glasses, I did get a bit of good news.

My eye doctor has a new retina camera thingy that, as you've probably guessed, produces an image of the retina. The image is loaded on a computer and enlarged, so that when the doctor discusses it with you you're looking at something the size of a toddler's head. It's impressive, if a little creepy.

The good news? I have healthy retinas.

My knees ache, my tummy muscles sag, but I have healthy retinas.

Woo-hoo!

Day 38: Mirror image

OK, I admit I like to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and imagine what I'd look like with a face lift. Not that I'd ever get one. Oh no, not me ...

But it's tempting whenever I see the difference it makes when I pull up the skin along my jaw line just a tinch. Voila -- 10 years gone

Not that I'd ever pay to have someone do this to me. Oh no, not me ... After all, that's the sort of thing only vain people do, right? Or people who have more money than they know what to do with.

Still, it's kind of nice to see an earlier version of myself -- and not so nice to see it fade away when I let go and my jawline goes all jowly.

I thought all that moisture lotion I started slapping on my face in my 20s was supposed to keep this from happening.

Day 37: Snow, reconsidered

My father didn't share my enthusiasm for big snowstorms. After all, he had to plow the stuff. All I had to do was go to bed at night and pray for a snow day.

I used to wonder at what age people went from loving the sight of a snowy day to hating the thought of it. Now I think I might be approaching that age.

We've had just two episodes of measurable snow in my part of the world. And yes, I thought they both turned the brown world of late autumn into something much lovelier.

But there's a good chance we'll get some significant snowfall in the next day or so. Frankly, I'm not looking forward to it. I have things to do the morning after the storm is expected to hit. I do not relish the thought of driving through all that slush and muck.

It helps that there's a 3-year-old in the house. He approaches life with so much wonder and excitement that it's impossible to be cynical in his presence.

I just hope that when he wakes up to a winter wonderland on Wednesday morning, his excitement will prove contagious.

Day 35 (and 36): It's beginning to look a lot like ...

... the Christmas crazies have begun. The most visible manifestation, for me, was the traffic jam on a local parkway a couple of days ago. The parkway is home to a handful of strip malls, one of which includes a Wal-Mart. This time of year, you don't drive on the parkway. You inch along it.

And in years past, I've done just that -- over and over in that mad dash to track down all the stuff on my Christmas list. This year, I am avoiding the parkway whenever possible. I'm also trying to avoid the Christmas crazies. So far, so good.

I am determined to pass my 60th Christmas in peace, not panic. I want the most important thing I spend time on this Christmas to be my family. I don't want to waste my time and my energy standing in department store lines. (I'm becoming a serious fan of online shopping, especially when the stores promise free shipping.)

We'll see if I can continue to keep the crazies at bay. After all, there are still 17 shopping days until Christmas left.

Day 34: Luddites Anonymous

A former newspaper colleague, a man in his 70s, is well known for his dislike of computers. Up until a few years ago, he'd type his columns on an old IBM Selectric, then have a secretary type them into the computer.

In time, he relented and learned to work the newsroom computers. These days, he even uses e-mail.

I spent part of the day at a training session for faculty members who will be teaching online during my school's winter term. I was, by far, the oldest person there. I'm determined not to fall so far behind the times, technologically speaking, that I turn into one of those pathetic old farts who try to look cool and end up looking silly in front of a couple dozen 20-year-olds as they fumble with the computers in their classroom.

I can hold my own. In fact, having taught online twice, I'm starting to feel as if I know what I'm doing. It feels good to feel competent at something new.

Day 33 (I think): Taking the stairs

There's a small parking space near my office, where in the past you could park for no more than 30 minutes. Now there's a new system in place that allows you to prepay for an entire day.

It's way too tempting to shell out a couple of bucks and skip that half-mile, uphill walk from the lot where I usually park. But I vowed this morning to use the free lot and walk.

So there I was, trudging along, climbing staircase after staircase and trying to catch my breath. Clearly, I need to be climbing more steps.

The last time I felt this winded after walking uphill to my office, my doctor sent me to a cardiologist for a stress test. His conclusion? That I was out of shape.

Gee, thanks.