What Makes This Happen?

OK, I know there are a million and three things that come along with advancing age.

Gravity starts to to do what it does best, and things go saggy and baggy. And I don't want to hear how you can prevent that from happening.

I say you can't.

You can slow it, stunt it, hide it. You can't stop it. Look hard in that mirror, the full-length one, in a room where you have privacy. Somewhere upon your person, Demon/Demoness Gravity has been pulling and pulling.

Sure, you can fix it, you can get in there with scalpel and skill and make things look good again, that's about it. Or you could try and cheap it out with someone who has a scalpel and not quite the level of skill you'd hoped for. Then not only don't you look good, you have people looking at you not so good.

You ache, you creak, you crack, you groan. Your knees holler at you all the time. You get down, there's pain in getting back up. You move the wrong way and it's good morning to a layer of some icy gel and and hopes of making an afternoon visit with the chiro.

All of this, I can live with, I can understand, it all makes sense. Time takes a toll. Or as I once remarked, "Time takes no prisoners, it leaves them to mourn." That might be profound.

What stumps me all to hell is this, the big question, the one that has me not only scratching my head, but annoying me no end.

Why were you able to get up, get ready, and get out of the house in, let's say, a half hour, once upon a time, when it now takes you an hour to do the same?

An hour? Hold it. It's more like an hour minimum. Some mornings, and it really isn't confined to mornings, it can take me ninety minutes to simply get out of bed, do the morning basics, and walk out to the truck and back out of the driveway.

I don't know what went wrong. Somewhere, somehow, something or someone stole up to an hour from me, gobbled it up doing whatever it is that takes a lot of time.

My routine is llikely what it was twenty, even twenty-five years ago. Then I could be on my way to work in thirty minutes, maybe forty if I sat to look at a paper for a few minutes. So what we have is The Departure Process. Typically, it's The Morning Process. Simple enough, here goes...

The Process...

I arise. Most mornings this is accomplished with weighty reluctance.

I go directly to the shower. Leaning against the wall for what could be all of a full minute, falling back to sleep is not impossible at this point in the process. I do not. I scrub, rinse, shampoo, rinse, and don't repeat.

Finished toweling, and cursing gravity, I now go downstairs to an already made cup of coffee. A slug and glug and it's keep moving.

In the downstairs half-bath I finish things off.

I dress and make sure the pets are fed and watered, also double checking that everything is where it should be, both on me and in the house.

I walk out the door.

I lock the door.

The walk is maybe eight seconds, then the key's in the ignition, and I'm in gear.

Whereupon and almost inevitably, I say to myself, "Fercrissakes, look at the time, I can't get out of this house anymore!"

And you know, I can't, I just can't.