You know, I’m not even trying to fight it or hide it anymore.
Every Most Some nights, lately, I end up getting in bed around 9 or 10. Even though I end up tossing and turning or working and reading, that’s what I do. And this week, that moved up an hour. What? I worked out twice, I got my work done, did some writing, and now it’s too cold to do anything but curse my dog for begging me to go out for the sole purpose of sniffing and pointing at things for fifteen minutes (hypocritical that I’m angry ‘cause that’s exactly what I do when I waste an hour in Yankee Candle Company and don’t buy anything). When the weather outside is frightful and the sun has set, very few things feel delightful aside from turning in like grandma and cocooning up like Finn.
Ahhh, this gif is smut for the laziness centers of my brain.
But even that gif’s no match for gift giving. I’m still a grandma when that happens – just an excessively excited one. Because even my Christmas requests this year showed just how much of an old hag I’ve turned into. I’d like to say that when my mom asked me what I’d like and I said “a Swiffer”, that I was having a lapse. A momentary break from reality. Temporary insanity.
I wasn’t.
Not only did I specially request that (along with a replacement vacuum for the one that broke and had to suck up fleas this summer), but I was full-body vibrating with excitement as I tore off the wrapping paper. I felt that feeling they wanted 50’s wives to have when they made all of those commercial-musical hybrids of some Lucille Ball looking bish dancing like the chick from “Enchanted” around her kitchen, wielding wooden spoons and dusters and whatnot. Meanwhile, as my sister’s in the corner, playing with her remote control Corvette and Amazon Fire (fun name. two points for having “on fire” in the name), I’m literally shitchyou-not fantasizing about how I don’t have to get down on my hands and knees to clean the kitchen anymore. Or the bathroom! I’ve got a chemically juiced maxi pad on a stick! My eyes well with joy-tears (and tiredness – it is already 8 P.M., after all) knowing this gift will last me well after I have to navigate my home in an assistive device. Which will be soon.
“This is what Christmas is all about,” I decide, as I watch my old blind dog piss on the floor inadvertently.
I wonder if she’s even aware it’s coming out of her. And how soon that same loss of bladder function will befall me.
“Probably this time next year,” I decide, embracing my Bissel box tightly. “If I’m lucky.”