Sunrise, sunset–and very little time in between

The older I get, the more things I have to do every day just to stay even. And by that, I mean reasonably healthy and not aging more quickly than necessary. Because of this, the amount of time I have to accomplish anything during any day is shrinking. No wonder retired people get less done!

Every morning when I rise (well, almost every morning), I want to get in a workout before breakfast. But you aren’t supposed to work out on an empty stomach, so I have half a banana. Then, I move into the preventative portion of my workout. It started years ago when I had some back pain, so I started doing back exercises each day. I have to do these or my back will stop supporting my body and instead become a (literal) pain. A few years later I had elbow issues that made it painful to type (which was important to my job) and play cello (which is important to my sanity). So–get this–I had to start doing wrist exercises so my elbows don’t give in to tendonitis. (Really!) The next body part to start breaking down was my shoulder, which actually required physical therapy to “fix.” It worked, but I had to add shoulder exercises to my daily routine. Fast forward another couple of years and I started having neck pain, so now I have to do daily neck exercises (some of which make me look like a turtle). And that’s just to keep my body from breaking down! Add some walking for cardio (because, as noted in several previous posts, I love to eat) and it’s practically midday before I am done with the workout and ready for breakfast.

The end of my day has a similar number of tasks. Before bed, I have to wash my face (with special anti-aging cleanser) and use what feels like a thousand different potions and lotions to combat the effects of the environment and the working out and the food I eat and the general aging process. I have to brush my teeth a special way to combat gum disease and floss carefully for the same reason and put in retainers so I don’t have to have braces a third time (sexy!). I have to slather the rest of my body (especially my feet) with super hydrating lotion because otherwise my skin will dry up and flake off. I use the toilet at both the beginning and end of the process, partly because the process is so darn long and partly in the (often vain) hope that I can sleep through the night without my bladder waking me. I usually have some other solution to apply or step to take–layering on hydrocortisone for that weird itch on my arm or gargling with warm salt water because there’s a tickle in my throat or using the Neti pot (so gross!) because I’m a little stopped up. By the time I finish all this (and I didn’t even list the clothes-related tasks like changing into my pjs and setting out workout clothes for the morning), it’s practically time to start that morning workout. Sleep? Who has time for it?

But of course I do sleep. I was sleep deprived for all of the years that we were raising three kids and working full time so now I sleep with no alarm clock (the number one perk of retirement!). I’m still catching up for all those years so am getting 8-9 hours a night. Fortunately I’m a “lark” so I generally wake before 7:00, but that means I’m often asleep before 10:00. Which also means I have to start the nighttime rituals essentially right after dinner.

All that just to prove that if I accomplish anything beyond these daily tasks it’s been a great day! And I mean anything–a load of laundry, read (part of) a book, get to the grocery store. That’s a success! If I want to do more than that I have to shorten or move my workout, which leads to pain in various body parts and/or even less available time when I try to cram in a long walk midday, which is counterproductive. Right after I retired my friend and former colleague Maryanne told me that she and her husband (both retired) just aim to do one thing each day. I didn’t understand that comment at the time, but as my morning and evening routines encroach ever further on my usable daytime hours, it makes total sense. In City Slickers, Billy Crystal mentions that by your seventies you start eating dinner at 2:00, lunch around 10:00, and breakfast the night before. I think it happens long before your seventies! Some days I just have two meals anyway, because there isn’t enough time for three. (But on those days there generally is a lot of snacking, also one of my favorite things to do.)

Sometimes (okay, often) I am frustrated by how quickly the days pass and how few things I seem to check off my to-do list. (For more about my list making habit/obsession, see earlier post.) But as Danny DeVito says at the end of Jumanji: The Next Level, “Getting old is a gift. I forget that sometimes, but it is.” Each day that I have to spend on this beautiful earth, especially with people whom I love, is a blessing, no matter what I accomplish (or don’t) in that day, or how old I feel. So I’m going to keep doing all those daily tasks so I can stay healthy as long as possible, and I’m going to remember to laugh about it daily. As George Bernard Shaw said, “You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”