Time, Why You Do Me Like That?

I’ve fallen into a certain morning routine. My alarm goes off at 7am. I turn it off. Somewhere around 10:30, my cat (and I don’t know how he does it) somehow manages to get my tired bones out of bed (I think he uses the Jedi mind trick; “You will feed me”). Some days I’ll do a minute and a half of yoga. Then I put on the coffee, check my email, and get to writing. My brain works better in the morning because I’m not alert enough to get distracted yet.

So this morning I’m sitting here typing, and I have forgotten to put on my glasses. You know how I realize this? Because, sitting here, two feet away from the monitor, I’m starting to get a headache. I don’t have that strong of a prescription- in fact my optometrist said that I could pass a driving test without them. So why the hell are the words right in front of my face all blurry?!?!?

Aging. The one thing I fear (besides sociopath serial killers and sharks, but sharks I can avoid and I sleep with a lead pipe in case of the former). I look at pictures of myself at 22 and say, what happened to my beautiful perfect skin? I’m 25. I’ve started using wrinkle cream as a means of prevention (god-willing). My dad was on his way to the dentist the other day and to make him feel better, I was going to joke, “At least you still have all your own teeth.” But I couldn’t say it, because I was paralyzed with fear. One day I won’t have my own teeth anymore. I don’t want to know what that feels like. When I was a kid, I somehow was accidentally at the dentist as the same time as my grandma, and I was talking to her and she had to cover her gums with her lips because she ain’t have no teeth in. Needless to say, it scarred me (and I mean both scarred as in trauma and scarred and in, “Ooohh gurl, I’m scarred all my teefs gone fall out my head).

And it’s not like you can say, Kate, you’re pretty stupid and reckless, I’m sure you’ll die young and beautiful. No, it’s not going to happen. My stars say that I will die old and happy- which I believe because as much as I have a Death Wish, I have the amazing power to out-wit death (those of you who have ever driven in a car with me can attest to both). Plus, the people in my family live to be really old, I mean, really, really old. My grandfather was 94. My great-grandfather was 95. I’m in for it. And don’t even suggest suicide, because I’ve already tried and it just ends in failure.

So, you may suggest, perhaps I should stop with the boozing and the smoking and the high-fat diet. Perhaps I should. I’m not going to, but I appreciate your suggestion. Perhaps you should stay out of the sun, or at the very least put on sun-screen, you might say. Ok, now you’ve gone too far. If I have to live for a hundred and eighty freaking years, I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. I’ll tell you exactly what my toothless 86-year-old grandmother told me, “Honey, when they lay me out in that coffin, you tell them I earned every wrinkle.”