OLDER THAN I ONCE WAS, YOUNGER THAN I’LL BE

 I tell you, any birthday that includes slogging through federal grant applications cannot be the best one ever, or even in the top five, but when you’re turning 43 and you’re in relatively good health and you don’t have a kid in intensive care with a broken back and an unknown degree of brain damage because he crashed his brand new motorcycle, you really have nothing to complain about.

 

Especially if, like me, your husband brought you pho for dinner.  If you’ve not had pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) because you don’t live on the Pacific Rim where Asian food joints don’t outnumber Starbucks (like anything could) but come close, you ought to come for a visit sometime and try it. 

 

Also, TGeek and the kiddies got me the present I requested: Wii Fit (see above, re: turning 43).  It’s a fun program, and a little snarky if you want to know the truth.  It begins by assessing your sorry self.  You stand on the board and it weighs you and tells you what your body mass index is and shames you into setting a goal to reduce it.  I’m happy to say that mine is 23, which falls in the “normal” range, but the Wii informs me that 22 is optimal so I’d better drop 10 pounds, pronto. 

 

Then the program tests your balance and apparently I failed dismally, because it says my Wii fitness age is 49.  On my 43^rd birthday.  That’s cold. 

 

Then you play the games.  There are balance games, aerobic workouts, strength training, and yoga.  This is not sit-on-your-fat-ass-and-make-your-avatar-exercise-with-a-joystick stuff, this is get-off-your-fat-ass-and-exercise-your-own-self stuff.  You have an avatar too, of course.  Mine is called DeeDee.

 

So I put in 30 minutes of exercise and with regular practice I’ll get my age down to 48 in a few weeks.  Perhaps when, someday, my real age and my Wii age match up, the sky will open and rainbows of gold will fall like hail, denting the windshields of our souls.

 

No, I don’t know what that meant either.  Hey, I oughta be a politician!  I am the one I’ve been waiting for!

 

Tomorrow, alas, more grant slogging to be done.  But DeeDee will be waiting for me when I return.  And maybe, hopefully, the boy in intensive care (friend of a friend), who has already beaten the odds several times (he’s alive, for one), will inch along  toward recovery.  Yeah, 43 is not so bad.