2.22.2011
Feeling the Years
On the eve of my birthday, I am of course taking that annual inventory of where I am in my life and where I want to be in the next say two, five, ten, twenty-five years. It’s that second time in each year I do this. the other being New Years and of course I have already broken those goals. So time to do the inventory and set some more goals. Physically, well I am still reeling from the self-medicating with chocolate from the stress and pain of the past two years so still not back to my fighting weight, but making strong progress. But the aches and pains of aging are becoming less than subtle and beginning to rear their ugly heads. I can’t help but think of the lines from City Slickers where Billy Chrystal sadly describes the stages of life to his son’s class and he describes “in our forties we will have surgery that we will call a procedure.” So when my right shoulder was developing into a chronic ache, I went to see a dear orthopedic surgeon for a cortisone shot hoping to bathe the pain. When that provided no relief, I fear a surgical repair or “procedure” is in my future, just don’t want to take the time off from working out to do it so when the pain gets too much I will go for it.
However, yesterday I was really reminded I am no longer 21 or the gymnast I once was many years ago. Most days I take the dogs down to the wash (a desert gravel area that runs between the housing developments-for those who are not in the desert), and exercise the dogs. This particular wash divides our subdivision with horse property that has everything from cows to ostriches and every farm animal in-between. Mocha, my chocolate lab, is obsessed with the ball and Taylor’s Yorkie (who we have adopted) loves to run after mocha chasing the ball and biting her. I threw the ball and it rolled under the fence where the people with the white pony and 2 goats live. They are putting up new fencing that has small two inch by four in wire squares on their three pole fencing. Apparently, they are mid-project because the fence was not secured at the bottom. I decided I could easily jump over and retrieve the ball. Now I was a gymnast for 13 years and fell off the beam sometimes more than I was on it, so I know how to land. But that short term muscle memory is long gone and I rolled my ankle upon landing. So inventory for physical: right shoulder and right ankle ailing the rest a work in progress and not a lost cause so conclusion: not bad for being within sniffing distance of …..50.