I Like Creative Writing
So are things better when you turn fifty? (I wrote this two years ago)
This year (right near the beginning so I’ve had time to get used to it), I turned fifty.
FIFTY! It doesn’t seem five minutes since I turned forty. The empty nest that I used to struggle with has become really rather comfortable, stayed empty and ….quiet… This has become a bit of a blessing, as it turns out that since I’ve turned fifty, I have become more intolerant to noise.
I didn’t take on so many personal challenges as I did in the last decade. At forty they seemed so much important. However, I did write and read out the eulogy at my dad’s funeral…that was a pretty big thing for me.
Still I have the same friends that I had a decade ago and still work and still love working (mostly) at the same place (I repeat words, too….still).
Cooking has not become ‘my thing’; no amount of watching ‘Master Chef’ seems to have any effect on my culinary skills what’s so ever. Mr. Noodles still bears the internal stomach-wall scars from the rice pudding I made him shortly after getting married thirty years ago.
My hair has gone more blonde….sorry, I will rephrase that…my hair has been made to look more blonde. My dreams of being a brunette were quashed as the startling white regrowth threatened to sabotage my hair-dresser’s hardiest of work. Blonde, I’ve discovered, is easier to hide the white ‘feelers’ that invade my hairline every four weeks or so.
Everything has shifted south……again! I swear it averages an inch a decade… Do men realise the trauma us ladies undergo when for the very first time, we discover our cleavage looks OLD? It won’t be long before I will have to employ a team of scaffolders every morning just to get out the house. Strange that although everything else seems to head downwards, your gums recede north…
Things have started creaking. Not the stairs as I climb them…..this is definitely not coming from under-foot, this is coming from under knee….and under hip….and probably ever joint that is being used.
Oh, I have acquired a new friend this decade…Tinitus…yay. How thoughtful he is to keep me company in the evening when the house is quiet; how thoughtful of him to keep me company half-way in to the night …
My sleeping pattern is still as irregular as it ever was, that has not improved. Doubt it ever will but my patience has remained stretchy enough to go around the block and back again.
I’ve learnt a new word! ‘Furrow’ as in furrowed brow. I looked up the meaning and it said, “A long, narrow trench made in the ground by a plough.” Well, this is pretty much how I discovered it but the trench was on my forehead one morning. No amount of prodding or Polyfilla would shift it. Have any of you ‘fellow over-fifties’ noticed that you wake up with pillow marks that don’t vacate until around three o’clock in the afternoon?
It takes me longer to get out of bed in the morning, no longer do I jump out of bed with a spring in my step. Nowadays, my springs have rusted and if it wasn’t for my bladder reminding me that is also fifty years old, I’d probably give in to the temptation of another ten minutes of gentle stretches to enable everything to at least move.
Something that no ‘ageing gracefully’ woman ever mentions is that your eye-lashes appear to shrink. Now I know that it is impossible that they can shrink as such but you get the impression that they have because your eye-lids become heavier. Should I call in the mini-scaffolders, do you think?
One of my previous active brain-cells has de-activated. This can be selective and it does show a little bit of life at times (usually when I’m trying to sleep). Often it runs a picket-line when trying to think of a person’s name or when you’re trying to recognise a face that is talking at you in a familiar way and it actively padlocks itself shut when new technology is placed in front of me. It is usually at that point that I realise I am turning in to my mum.
So, are things better when you turn fifty? I think so as long as you don’t lose your sense of humour because be warned………..you are going to need it.
©pennynoodles
This year (right near the beginning so I’ve had time to get used to it), I turned fifty.
FIFTY! It doesn’t seem five minutes since I turned forty. The empty nest that I used to struggle with has become really rather comfortable, stayed empty and ….quiet… This has become a bit of a blessing, as it turns out that since I’ve turned fifty, I have become more intolerant to noise.
I didn’t take on so many personal challenges as I did in the last decade. At forty they seemed so much important. However, I did write and read out the eulogy at my dad’s funeral…that was a pretty big thing for me.
Still I have the same friends that I had a decade ago and still work and still love working (mostly) at the same place (I repeat words, too….still).
Cooking has not become ‘my thing’; no amount of watching ‘Master Chef’ seems to have any effect on my culinary skills what’s so ever. Mr. Noodles still bears the internal stomach-wall scars from the rice pudding I made him shortly after getting married thirty years ago.
My hair has gone more blonde….sorry, I will rephrase that…my hair has been made to look more blonde. My dreams of being a brunette were quashed as the startling white regrowth threatened to sabotage my hair-dresser’s hardiest of work. Blonde, I’ve discovered, is easier to hide the white ‘feelers’ that invade my hairline every four weeks or so.
Everything has shifted south……again! I swear it averages an inch a decade… Do men realise the trauma us ladies undergo when for the very first time, we discover our cleavage looks OLD? It won’t be long before I will have to employ a team of scaffolders every morning just to get out the house. Strange that although everything else seems to head downwards, your gums recede north…
Things have started creaking. Not the stairs as I climb them…..this is definitely not coming from under-foot, this is coming from under knee….and under hip….and probably ever joint that is being used.
Oh, I have acquired a new friend this decade…Tinitus…yay. How thoughtful he is to keep me company in the evening when the house is quiet; how thoughtful of him to keep me company half-way in to the night …
My sleeping pattern is still as irregular as it ever was, that has not improved. Doubt it ever will but my patience has remained stretchy enough to go around the block and back again.
I’ve learnt a new word! ‘Furrow’ as in furrowed brow. I looked up the meaning and it said, “A long, narrow trench made in the ground by a plough.” Well, this is pretty much how I discovered it but the trench was on my forehead one morning. No amount of prodding or Polyfilla would shift it. Have any of you ‘fellow over-fifties’ noticed that you wake up with pillow marks that don’t vacate until around three o’clock in the afternoon?
It takes me longer to get out of bed in the morning, no longer do I jump out of bed with a spring in my step. Nowadays, my springs have rusted and if it wasn’t for my bladder reminding me that is also fifty years old, I’d probably give in to the temptation of another ten minutes of gentle stretches to enable everything to at least move.
Something that no ‘ageing gracefully’ woman ever mentions is that your eye-lashes appear to shrink. Now I know that it is impossible that they can shrink as such but you get the impression that they have because your eye-lids become heavier. Should I call in the mini-scaffolders, do you think?
One of my previous active brain-cells has de-activated. This can be selective and it does show a little bit of life at times (usually when I’m trying to sleep). Often it runs a picket-line when trying to think of a person’s name or when you’re trying to recognise a face that is talking at you in a familiar way and it actively padlocks itself shut when new technology is placed in front of me. It is usually at that point that I realise I am turning in to my mum.
So, are things better when you turn fifty? I think so as long as you don’t lose your sense of humour because be warned………..you are going to need it.
©pennynoodles
56-60, F
