What they don't tell you about aging.

Since I am older than just about anyone else I know these days (older cousins excluded), let me pass on a few things.

1) Your night vision goes straight to hell. I used to get very exasperated driving behind older people at night as they poked along. Payback is a bitch, guys. When it first started to happen to me, I kept wiping my eyes because it seemed like I was looking through dark gauze. Nah, just aging eyes. It's actually easier to drive in the country than in the city. Well, as long as no one is tailgating me. In the city the lights can be very distracting. In the country it's just you and your headlights. And oncoming traffic. And the guy behind you. But it's still easier than the city. Of course in bad weather it's all bad. You have been warned advised.

2) Your joints. Kiss them good-bye. Now admittedly mine are much worse than yours are most likely going to be thanks to lupus and whatnot, but even before that hit it was Creak-o-rama. As it was with my friends. It was pretty funny when we'd get together and the joint would be popping. So to speak.

3) You lose the padding on your feet. Really. Probably later than I did, again thanks to autoimmune diseases, but it does happen. For the past two years I was experiencing a lot of pain when I went barefoot and incredible pain even in socks if I stepped on something innocuous like a cord or something. I felt like I was walking on the bones of my feet. And it turns out that I was! Validation is good even when it's weird. I had no idea that it was also going to be a part of the aging process. Probably not until the 70s for the rest of you.

4) You still get freaking hot flashes. Females, anyway. Now part of that, again, is lupus doing its demonic thing with my body's ability to regulate my body temp, but even before that - yup, hot flashes. Not as frequent or as intense as during perimenopause, but they're still hanging on.

5) Skin. It's actually kind of fascinating how the elasticity and the texture of your skin changes over time. I don't think it's a bad thing at all, but it's a definite change. I honestly love how my hands look now with all of the creases and lines: It's like they're made from fine crepe. I don't know how to say this tactfully because I don't want it to sound mean, but I'm truly disappointed that I won't be around to see all of your tattoos in another 30 or 40 years. I wonder how they'll transform?

6) This last is mostly for me, but maybe some of you have had surgical work done. I had major surgery done on my jaw and mouth back in 1989. I have pins in my jaw and a metal plate in my chin; my jaw was moved back, the top of my palate was sliced and repositioned. It was a big deal. It was also 24 years ago. My bones have shrunk; the hardware is old. My jaw pretty much has a life of its own now. That thought that aging was going to affect the surgical changes decades down the road was never brought up. I'm not sure it was even considered.

7) Your aging body changes. You shrink. I didn't want to believe it, either! I remember talking with cousin Barbara about four years ago, laughing together as she told me how outraged she was to find out that she shrunk 1 1/2 inches. She yelled at her doctor :) "That can't be right! I'm very active. I eat right. I take care of my health!" Heh. And now it's my turn. I'm an inch shorter than I was a few years ago. Of all the changes that come with aging, this is the one that really bites me. Crazy, but there it is.

And now, since our power came back just a while ago (Yes! Yes! Yes!) I'm going to have something not microwaved to eat, and then I'm going to settle in for Game of Thrones. Life is good.

I have no idea what this post is going to be about

Seriously, I'm dealing with massive fatigue and an allergy attack that combined are making me pretty loopy. Let's just see, shall we?

As those of you on Facebook know, we were hit with a huge ice storm Thursday night into Friday. Power is out all over the damn place. Deb, whose apartment is in the basement, didn't own a backup battery for her sump pump, so with the power outage and the freakish amount of rain, her apartment flooded. Like … flooded. The cats' food dishes were floating. All of the floors have to be torn out, all of the walls need to be replaced as far up as the moisture seeped. Some of her furniture, some of our stuff stored down there is toast.

And speaking of toast, that's what we're living on pretty much. We finally got a big generator hooked up, so now we have water (yay, toilets!) and the fridges are running again. But we have to be really careful about everything else. We can use the toaster or the electric kettle or the microwave. I really had no good sense of how much I used the stove until I lost access to it. Also no TV, no radio, no hair dryer, certainly no washer or dryer. Or shower or bath. We use a candle in the bathroom instead of the lights. One light in the livingroom/kitchen, and I get to use a light in my room because I am truly night blind.

Hydro One (the power company for rural folk) keeps pushing back when we'll get power. It started out as Saturday night, then late Sunday night, now sometime Monday afternoon. I'm not holding my breath. I am, however, going to be missing Game of Thrones tonight. Bleh.

The good news is that the alpacas are all OK. The girls and babies were closed in their barn, but the boys had freer access to the outside. I did see a couple of the boys gingerly making their way across the ice-covered ground. Lots of damage all around the area, though.

Dar has had a buttload of medical tests (literally in the case of her colonoscopy last Wednesday), and Friday we get to hear all of the results put into - it is hoped - some concrete diagnoses and plan. We know that the colonoscopy results were A-OK, but the results of her upper GI tests won't be disclosed until Friday. Good thoughts, please.

I'm still waiting for my damn work visa to be renewed so I can get some tests and procedures done. It's over 22 months, guys. On June 4 it will be two years since my visa and healthcare expired. I'd say that's a wee bit excessive, wouldn't you?

Im not reading much anymore because I keep falling asleep. I've been trying to get through Mort (part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) for several months now. I bring it with me to read while I'm waiting for Dar to do her thing at the various units at the hospital in London, then fall asleep sitting upright in uncomfortable chairs before I get more than a few pages in. My life, she is exciting, no?

I went kind of overboard with The Walking Dead right near the end there. AMC reran the whole series every night for a week before the finale, and even before that they were rerunning the first season on Thursday(?) nights in b&w. Which I watched. As I watched the whole series rerun during the last week. It became so much a part of my world that I found myself looking for zombies in other TV shows. Like Boardwalk Empire. For god's sake, Nucky, don't just pull over to the side of road and start yelling! The walkers will hear you! I started getting a little concerned about our glass patio door. Way too easy to break down. Now I have until October to settle down.

I was initially concerned about Glenn Mazzara leaving as show runner, especially when I heard that he didn't like the direction that the creator (Robert Kirkland) wanted to take the show next season. But then I watched the episodes that the new guy (whose name I cannot remember right now) wrote - and they turned out to be my favorite episodes of the series. I'm going to have to trust based on that, because the finale had a big WTF moment at the end. But as I said … I'll trust.