I’m getting old! Well duh! Aren’t we all? Yes, but this is about me. About me getting old. It’s not that I don’t care about you getting old – if you are – no offence intended. But this is my blog, and since the kids have left home and Whizz is a ‘pillar of the community’, the only person to write about, is me. Unless you want me to get into the state of the world. No. Let’s not do that.
I’m not doing so badly really. According to my Apple watch, my VO2 Max puts me in the 67th percentile of women my age. i.e. my cardio fitness is greater that 67% of all 70.83 year-old females (allegedly). I am apparently the equivalent of 8.6 years younger than my nearly 71 years: 62.23 years old. I’m a spring chicken and I have a very helpful rooster to keep me out of trouble.
I’m lucky. I am from a family of nonagenarians. My mum is 96, her father lived until 98. My Dad lived until 89 and would have lived longer were it not for anaphylaxis striking him down when he received antibiotics in preparation for receiving a pacemaker.
But my brain! That is a different matter altogether. I mean what is the point of having a healthy body if the brain lets you down?
In truth brain has always let me down – in certain ways. See my school report.
I’m a dreamer – my kids tell me it is now called ADHD. Modern young people are well versed in the finer points of mental health. I have a high IQ, but failed the MENSA test because of a lack of connectivity in my brain. I am sharp as a button on logical matters but it takes me ages to register the ‘therefore’ from a sentence. I call it parallel thinking. One part of my brain is thinking A and another part is thinking B and the two are incompatible.
To help, I have learned to do humdrum things like emptying the dishwasher or driving to the shops, in autopilot. I can think (daydream) about other things like writing or art or what to cook for visitors, while cleaning the loo or weeding the flowerbeds. Sometimes, while in this state of autopilotness, a penny drops and I can deal with a potential issue. But autopilot has set me turning the car left out of the house when I should have turned right, and taking a friend all the way to where I worked in Chester when our intended destination was the city centre. Once, I confidently instructed a fellow art lover, who was kindly taking me to an art gallery, to set out left, and to my chagrin she had to turn around. On yet another occasion, I was ‘guiding’ a friend (despite all this, I have a few) from Taplow Court, our Buddhist HQ. I turned right and she obediently followed. When I realised I was heading the wrong way, she equally obediently trundled around a tiny grass island at the side of the road to continue the journey in the right direction.
Thanks to Whizz, who always wants to help, my phone and watch are, like him, my constant support – as long as I set a reminder and Whizz keeps his calendar up to date.
There is a wonderful app. called Due. When I need to do something, it pings my phone and vibrates my wrist and pops up on my laptop. It keeps on buzzing and pinging and popping until I tell it I’ve done the job. My Due list grows with my shrinking memory.
I bumble through life forgetting appointments, forgetting names and the words for things and generally failing to concentrate. My friends look worriedly on. I know my bumbling is exacerbated by having my head in a piece of art or a blog post such as this but I am trying to do things that made me happy as a child. I can’t assume I’ll live into my 90s. It feels like managing life and being creative are incompatible but I soldier on. Knowing I have a ‘condition’ helps me to be kind to myself.
So, to something more lightweight – to use an appropriate word. Yes, we are back to diet and my backside.
As a person interested in food, who listens to The Kitchen Cabinet and The food Programme on Radio 4 and subscribes to the Zoe blog, I note that the latest eating advice is to consume 30 different plants each week. This is what I started to do. I made fantastic salads with seeds, nuts, many and various vegetables, herbs and spices.
I had never spent any money with Zoe until an offer turned up for a limited time deal of 20% off their all natural 30-plants-and-seeds, sprinkle-on-your-food supplement.
This simple product contains 30 different fruit/veg/seeds to boost gut bacteria. It would improve my immune system, help me control my hunger and make me feel extraordinary. I thought I would give it a try.
It’s delicious. Easy to use and compatible with sweet or savoury but honestly, the wind!!!
I have literally sat on the loo and farted for 30 seconds! I walk up the stairs followed by regular little pops. I bend to pick something up, yep, out it comes.
Whizz, who has never grown up when it comes to humour, finds farts funny. So, when he’s not fending off work issues he is chortling away in his office.
I’m glad I can relieve him of some stress. It’s healthier than a gin and tonic, but now, as well as needing to concentrate on where I am driving a companion, I must concentrate even more on squeezing my sphincter. I can’t help wondering what life will throw at me next.