My mom gets meals on wheels delivered every day except Wednesday. The food she thinks is pretty good most days. Except for the days they serve fish. She's not much of a fish eater. Our family never really a fish family. So, I am always or try to be prepared for the knock on the door around 11ish most days. There is this one man who delivers a couple days out of the week and he is older and he wears a helmet. I think he rides a bike of some sort but I never really look totally out of the door to see what mode of transportation he uses to get here. But, he is a tall gentlemen and sticking out from his bike helmet is a wispy grey hair. He has bright grey eyes and always wears shorts and sneakers with knee length socks. He has a very kind face and a nice smile. My mom doesn't really go to the door, by the time she would get to the door if she did whoever was at the door would be long gone. She sits and waits until I open the door and collect the food and bring it to her. Well, the older gentlemen, when I open the door he always calls me by my mom's name. I guess he assumes that I am her and it is hard to see her behind a door that is cracked open just enough for the food to be handed over and then closed. I smile back at him and take the food and then he says God Bless you and he is off and running with the next delivery.
Then I started to think. I was thinking that you have to be over 60 to get into this program among other things and that my mom is well over 60 at 77. I was thinking now if he thinks I am my mom, a 77 year old senior then something is wrong with me looking way too old or him just not knowing the difference. Maybe he thinks I am a young 77. Then it bothered me that he would think I was close to 77. I looked in the mirror to check for myself to see if I had aged 25 years or so and didn't even know it and just thought I looked okay and I really looked like an older woman twice my age almost. I don't have a full length mirror so I had to settle for the one in the bathroom over the medicine cabinet. I looked hard and long at my face. I didn't see any wrinkles or lines that I hadn't saw before and they weren't that pronounced so I thought ok pretty much the same face. I did notice that my skin was drier then I thought as I ran my hand across my face just to be sure. So, I checked my hair. You know sometimes you can have some grey that you never noticed or are just so used to seeing that you over look it. I looked closely and carefully for those grey hairs I hate so much. I saw a baby one in the front on the side of my head but that wouldn't age me 25 years I didn't think. I took the hand mirror and checked the back of my head, the part that I can't see normally when I comb and brush my hair. I didn't see anything there either with the exception of two greys. Of course, the man can't see the back of my head so that would not have made a difference one way or the other with me looking old. Then I was forced to come to the conclusion that the man is blind. Yep, that is my story and I am sticking with it. I said to myself I don't look a day over 47 at 51. And I am happy with that.
One of my son's favorite things to say to me is OMG. I feel like saying that a lot too sometimes. I actually could say it a lot more then he does when I tell him to do something like come inside after 200000 hours of being outside on the weekend or taking out the trash. I can say it when I have my 30,000 hot flash during the daytime and my sometimes oh so not nice hot sweats at night. I could say it when I am running to bathroom after my 5th cup of cold water trying to cool myself off after just sitting and sweating for no reason at all. Or when I am watching a comedy on television and start crying for no reason at the happy ending. Not too mention all the aches and pains that come along with just getting older and I won't try to mention the grey and the wrinkles that will soon be creeping into my life more as the years go forward.
So, I was putting the meatballs in the oven. I saw a recipe on the Rachel Ray show and well, got tired of eating the same old same old around here and was going to try some turkey meatballs for dinner along with pasta. So, I am standing there about to get the onion out of the fridge to grate it over the meat and I start grating it and then I starting the onion cry not long afterwards. Ok, that was bad enough and then I look out of the kitchen window and see a puppy. Just a little brown puppy with big black eyes. I don't know where he came from or who if anyone owns him. I didn't see his human with him at first so I started thinking about my first puppy, Feeshia, who was a German Shepard puppy with big black eyes and as sweet as she could be. Then I started crying harder. You would have thought that someone died or something. It was that bad. Good thing I was in the kitchen alone and my mom was asleep oblivious to all of this crying. My son was happily playing hide and seek tag outside with a group of neighborhood kids so he was not a witness to this crying fit either. I put the onions away and when my son came in a few minutes later I blamed the onions for the tears I was wiping from my eyes. He shook his head got a cup of water and ran back outside. If only I was able to run as fast as he can was my first thought. Then I stopped didn't want to start blubbering again all over the meatballs.
It is just funny how things have changed for me. I can't remember crying this much or this often since I was pregnant. And even then it wasn't this much. I remember when I had my periods I would wish for this day when I would not have the cramps, the pain, the pads, the tampons, the mood swings and everything else that came along with it. My friends and I would talk about menopause and sometimes pray that ours would come early. I guess be careful what you ask for. Although it didn't come too early I now have new stuff that comes along with that wish. But, would I got back to the cycles? I think that I would go back long enough just to have another child and then I would not even think about going back. But, I guess also the divine plan for me was just one child. And I am ok with that. So, I will just go with the non flow of menopause and take what it throws at me and throw it back and make lemonade out of oranges on the days when I feel like crying over the meatballs.
I turned on the oven to bake biscuits this morning. I had a taste for biscuits slathered with butter and strawberry jam. That was going to be breakfast. My mind was made up. I opened the can of biscuits and popped them in the oven and tossed the can in the garbage. The oven was pre heated as usual. It didn't really bother me at first the heat from the oven. I could almost taste the buttery goodness while waiting. I had my plate ready in antispaction. I considered some eggs but no biscuits were fine. I wasn't too hungry and did not want or desire anything more then buttery biscuits.
Then something happens that hasn't in a while giving me a false sense of security that it would be fine to turn the oven to 250 degrees for 8-10 minutes to bake my biscuits. I started to get hotter then the forth of July. I tried fanning myself with a dish cloth hoping that would do the trick. It didn't. I opened the fridge and stood there searching the shelves for something cool to drink. Anything I was thinking. I grabbed a juice box. It was small but in a pinch it worked. So, I guzzled down the few ounces of juice and checked on the biscuits hoping they were done. The heat was killing me and so was the waiting. They were almost done. I went into the living room ten feet from the blazing oven and opened a window. That really didn't help because its warm today and no breeze to be felt.
I crossed my fingers and said a little prayer that my biscuits would be done. They were not as brown as I would have liked but they were cooked. I took them out and my buttery goodness was ready to begin. Although, I was hot and tired for no apparent reason and so I took my hot biscuit and my mouth watered as I bit into the goodness which was a biscuit I was craving.
