It’s a sad day when I find I’m no longer the spry limber young thing I once was. Yeah I know, I was never too limber to begin with, nor particularly spry. But when it takes nearly as long to stand upright from a cross-legged position as it did to get through the seventh stage of the Dark Angel PS2 game, it’s really only a small matter of time now before I put aside the Subaru and purchase a mobility scooter.  I’ve begun looking into walking frames, and I’m thinking I’ll go for the one with a seat that lifts up to reveal a bed pan. How freakin’ handy is that?!

This aging spiel is one I’ve been on before, but little did I realise that while I was using pancake foundation as a filler for my eye-wrinkles and considering a burka to hide my expanding chin, the joints and ligaments were beginning to wizzen up like gnarled old rubber bands.  If I spend too long sitting on the floor, I have to rise in a series of steps (Step 1: kneel; Step 2: right leg forward; Step 3: Rest.) and then shuffle across the room at a 75% slant until I can at last stand up straight.

I realise I’ve become a complete hypochondriac about it, but I can’t help it.  Ooh, shooting pain down my right leg! Gah, I have sciatica! Must’ve popped a disc when incorrectly bending to pick a peg up from the ground or whatever menial task it was that causes old people to start breaking down.

Mysterious aches and pains are not meant to kick in until I’m well into my dotage.  Of course it’s not a simple case of being unfit. I do shiploads of exercise.  I pace rooms in nervous anxiety on a daily basis. That’s exercise.  I use my go-go-gadget extendable arms and legs to perform the million-in-one tasks that my boss insists must all take place NOW.  That’s exercise.  (Hmm. That’s probably also the cause of all those aches and pains.)  And, most importantly, I have a lateral thigh trimmer which on occasion, I glance at. Glancing is exercise.  For my eyes.  Good enough.

Now to go entirely off-topic, our bloke who does the heavy lifting decided to walk off the job on Thursday. Leaving me with the heavy lifting. Weak little pensioner that I am!   Though, I’m relieved that he’s gone.  Don’t have to put up with his sleazy cheesy little comments and innuendos anymore. Yay! No more, “Mmmm.. Bet you were a bit of a bad girl when you were a teen eh? I can just see you in a bit of goth bondage gear and a studded collar. Mmm…”

Urgh, those mmmmm’s of his were the skin-crawling worst. There’d be the “mmmmm” if he walked past while I was bending to plug in the vaccum cleaner, or an “mmmm” if he caught me leaning over a piece of furniture in contemplation of where to shift it to.  I’d clench my teeth and berate myself for bending over at all with him in the vicinity, but he didn’t need any kind of provocation.  He could be standing across the room silently drinking a coffee, then look over at me holding a pricing gun and go “mmmmm…” as if I were Homer Simpson’s next meal.  Always these things when no one else was around, of course.

Unfortunately his sudden decision to scarper off without notice has left us to try and pick up his slack when we’re already short-staffed. My own work is now two days behind, and with Char going into hospital to have her appendix removed on Thursday, I’m going to need the shoe-maker’s elves to get back on track the following week.  Stress stress stress!

I dreamt I was at work this morning.  Or rather, a nightmare.  Falling further behind on tasksI couldn’t catch up on.  Thankfully the phone rang and woke me up, or I could have hit rock bottom and died.  (Doesn’t that happen if you dream of falling?)