After careful consideration and thoughtful analysis, I have scarifyingly concluded that I am becoming a fuddy duddy writer.
I am at home all the time. It’s where I work as well as live, but, ya know, I’m just always here. I dislike shoes a great deal and so, when at home, I wear socks and slippers. Like an Old Person. I wear my glasses on a string around my neck because I need them to see close but not far, so they go on and off, on and off, all day long.
I also wear a really old cardigan that I’ve had forever. It’s so old that it is worn through on one shoulder, and because I have no sewing skills whatsoever, I have repaired the hole with a safety pin. It’s a charming fashion statement, really hip. Also, the cardigan is currently missing a button that came off a couple of weeks ago when I was loading dishes into the dishwasher, and one of the buttons snagged on a cup hook and blammo, there you go, button overboard. The button currently lives on my monitor stand, where it regards me mournfully, as if to say When will I be loved? When will I reunite with my button brothers and sisters? Given my sewing skills, the answer is Long time, button dude.
I wear this cardigan every single day that I am working, because I like to be warm. Except sometimes I have to put it in the laundry, like a kid with her blankie, and then I am twitchy until it is dry and I can wear it again.
Fom my father I seem to have inherited the Get Up Early gene, and I am currently working hard on this and that, so these days I fade early and well, just want to go to bed. Like a fuddy duddy old person. I talk back to the television. I drink endless cups of tea while I write. I like my space tidy and my bed made. I eat oatmeal. My god, I just willingly watched educational TV with my sweetie last night. Where is the young person who stayed up until three a.m. reading and then went, owl-eyed but reasonably coherent, to classes the next day? Where is the woman who could drink six rum-and-tonics or two bottles of cheap wine in a night and live to tell the tale? Where is the bundle of energy who drove eight hundred miles in a day by herself, singing to U2 and smoking Parliament cigarettes and eating Burger King all the way?
Ah, well, I know where she is. She’s in the same place as the young person who was so often anxious on a daily basis because every situation was new. She’s with the woman who wouldn’t speak her mind because someone might not like it. She doesn’t drive a car across country anymore: instead she drives her mind into territory a lot farther than any odometer can measure. She tugs her cardigan into place, and then she plugs into her Radio Paradise or her Citysounds web radio or just cranks up Crystal Method on iTunes, and lives the life she has made for herself. In her slippers. With better wine and fine company and an inner life that never stops, not even in her sleep.
You’re no fuddy duddy—you embrace your past and use it in your present and just do too many new cool things to have time for the old cool things.
Be that as it may, here’s a hug though the intraweebs, one aging rebel to another. It only gets better.
At least there isn’t a fag hanging from your lip and a scowl on your face for that damn neighbor’s barking dog.
But oh do I empathize. Same robe everyday. To bed around 10. Just doing what I feel most comfortable doing. Yet inside there still rumbles the guy who danced all night and gritted through the days after. I even drink the occasional R n C just to keep my hand in, but now just the one makes me tipsy.
It is strange to look in the mirror and see past the accumulations and into the same eyes that took the chances, had the romances. To wonder what she’ll do without me. To know I’d go crazy if she went first.
Ah see now I didn’t mean to get mordant but then that’s just another aspect of this age thing.
But I’m the one who stomps outside and shakes my cane at the neighbour offspring and shouts, “You kids get off my lawn!”
Nicola….delegation is important. A sound division of responsibility.
Hmmm… I never though about it too much, but… you Are home every time I come over.
I smiled at your first sentence, but after that I laughed out loud. You just described your mother! Scary, isn’t it? As far as that button is concerned, next time I’m at your house I’ll show you how to sew on buttons … can’t believe I missed that chance 40 years ago! Mum
If ‘May you live in interesting times’ is a curse, ‘May you have an interesting life’ may be one too.
I hope you are prepared for all those offers to mend or sew buttons on your cardigan! *grins*
I feel fuddy duddy now too but the party animal of old can sometimes be whipped out for the occassion… maybe that’s the same for you too! hehe
Come to think about it, I did lean on my cane and glare at the 18 yr old walking (ok, driving) advertisement for artificiality who didn’t want to wait for me to cross in the Walgreen’s parking lot today . . .
I’m all for age and character. As J says, we’ve earned each and every one of our grey hairs.
And of course as we write this, we’re kicking back on the couch in our holey sweats and holey sweatshirt with all three cats in attendance. I think all requisites for crazy cat-ladydom have been achieved.
First Kelley thanks for coming out to say how life is for you, it gives me immense pleasure to know that your pathway is of your making. Your words painted a clear picture of your way cool days.
Crystal Method, awesome!
And hey just so ya know, I get it all, everything you said, been there for quite a while myself. I love thinking about the things that were and the things done wow, did I really do all of that, yes I did including drive forth and back across the USA twice. Have flown the crossing 4 or 5 times to go here or there for this or that.
I don’t wear sweaters or socks or shoes, ever, well sometimes socks with my sandals. when I have to go out, in the winter, I’m a Californian, I hate shoes.
I hate having to get dressed in order to go to the store or the doc. I do wear my clothes until they’re in tatters as I hate spending my money on such irrelevant things.
I wish for you and Nicola and pets if you have them, and your family and friends the most comfortable newyear. It’s that time now to concentrate on your settled down happiness and wow Crystal Method, did I happen to mention the smile that put on my face?
I get to be both the tolerant one and the cane waving one, keeps them others guessing and the closer ones knowing there’s stability here in my house. And though I don’t lock my door there had better be a phone call before just coming in, I’ve been known to be deep into a thing or two here. 😉
But fortunately I can see movement when someone does forget to call first but the people in my life save one know better not out of fear but courtesy. I’ve kind of lost my taste for biting off heads and even come to love some of the things that used to just piss me off. I did not see that one coming.
You are not a fuddy duddy. They don’t do this,
“she drives her mind into territory a lot farther than any odometer can measure. She tugs her cardigan into place, and then she plugs into her Radio Paradise or her Citysounds web radio or just cranks up Crystal Method on iTunes, and lives the life she has made for herself. In her slippers. With better wine and fine company and an inner life that never stops, not even in her sleep.”
And even if they did, it sounds pretty great to me. : ) But in that case, maybe I am one too…
I suppose, from a not-very-long distance, knowing what you want and sticking to it looks an awful lot like being a fuddy duddy.