Happy Birthday to ME!!

Truthfully, my birthday was a couple of weeks ago but I have a little ceramic cake that I light a tea light in for the entire month of August (the cake says, "August" so I'm entitled). It is a pretty little 3-tiered cake. Cream and chartreuse and pink and periwinkle. With a lavender candle sticking out on top. The halcyon candlelight flickers through the little windows and doors of the cake. It's like something out of Mother Goose. A little family should be living inside.

My real birthday cake was entirely different. And edible.

I turned 46 on August 9th and it was rather uneventful. Birthdays never freaked me out much. Mainly, because I am notoriously bad at keeping track of them. In my 30s, I had myself turning 40 twice. Finally, my mother, in exasperation, said, "You know when you were born. Do the math!" 

I don't make that carefree mistake anymore. I look my age and - worse! - I feel it. 

It all started (ironically) with 40. Over night I could not read the fine print. Truly! Over night! And the aches? I am rarely without them. I make little grunting noises when I sit down. All I need is a babushka and opaque stocking rolled down over my knees and my picture of decline would be complete.

My concentration is shot to hell. I used to have laser-like focus. Now it seems as if nothing is really worth my attention. This is not a conscious, arrogant judgment on my part. This is a decision that has been made by a heretofore unknown part of my brain that has hijacked my comfortably familiar neurons and synapses and has them all huddled in some back corner near my ancient brain stem while it calls all of the shots. 

When my boss discussed a new task he wanted me to do, I would unfailingly be thinking of something else. I'd like to say I was distracted by something weighty, like the bank in the process of foreclosing on my home or my husband (nonexistent) having an affair with my sister, but I was much more likely to be wondering if the trails were muddy enough to require hiking boots or if I could get away with wearing some lighter shoe. 

There is nothing quite like coming out of a reverie as you are leaving your boss' office with the dawning horror that you have no clue as to what took place while in it.

So, turning 46 is not the high point of my year but, since it is no worse than turning 45, I am mostly okay with it.

Instead of dwelling on my decline, I am choosing to focus on the second half of my life (assuming I live until 90) and what I want to do with it. The new ADD is a bit of a stumbling block - that and the unbelievable lassitude that washes over me at the most unexpected times. All of this makes things are a bit untidy but I am hopeful. I have always needed a fire lit under me. That inclination, coupled with an exceptionally high threshold for deprivation, has always made me a late-boomer. It's something that causes my family no pause whatsoever but sends my friends up a tree with anxiety and bewilderment.

I am streamlining my focus: 1. Continue to exercise (lose weight, for god's sake!!); 2. Clean the house; 3. Build up a dog-walking business.

This should be doable. 

Right?