Thursday, November 03, 2005

On aging

Generally, when I start a new journal, I feel the need to introduce myself to the journal. Like, "Hi, Kim Shable here, age 26, currently employed at an up-and-coming (or so my boss and the good people at A.M. Best say) monoline worker's compensation insurance company." But then the introduction kind of devolves, and sounds sort of Love Connection-y ("Well, Chuck, I like long walks and a good strip steak") and keeps me from doing what I really want to do, which is generally

a) Try desperately to figure out why people are suddenly calling me ma'am
b) Make fun of strangers
c) Wonder why no one has yet come to my house with a big box of money, demanding to publish my thesis.

So, let's just assume that you already know and like me, and move on from there.

I reach out to you now, weird online journal to whom I haven't introduced myself properly, because I don't know if you noticed, but I used the word monoline a couple paragraphs ago, and that scares me. And it scares me that I know who A.M. Best is (not a cheap motel with a so-so buffet, it turns out!), and that, if you got hurt at work right now, I could totally hook you up.

I'm supposed to have the kind of job where I can hook you up with backstage passes, or a flat screen TV, or massive amounts of booty. Not the kind of job where I routinely field the question "So if they own their own materials, does that mean the subcontractor is excluded?"

(Answer: not necessarily.)

I realize that I'm only 26, and that I haven't been out of school that long, and that I have a great deal of time in which to better myself and build up a new arsenal of stories to exploit for giggles, having used up most of the good ones for my thesis. But I also realize that some of the people who report to me at work (because people report to me, isn't that fucked up) think I am their mom, and I just want to grab them and go I'm fun! Fun! I drink alcoholic beverages like the young people and I do enjoy shaking my moneymaker! But I doubt they would believe me.

Because I really am aging at an astonishing rate. Some proof:

1. I squint all the time. I'm a squinty old hag.
2. I can drink exactly one short beer and two tall beers. Anything more than that: barf fest.
3. Today's music makes me agitated and sort of itchy.
4. I have crow's feet. Why? Why?
5. I wake up early on Saturdays, not because I want to, but because I can't help it.

God, I am a curmudgeon! Crap! Craaaaap!

2 pipers piping:

T. said...

It's comforting to know we're all just getting old and wasting away. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

Since Kim brought up raking:

Have you ever noticed that if you have a leaf blower that it is socially acceptable to blow your leaves into the street? But you never see anyone raking their leaves into the street, because that would be a terrible breach of neighbor to neighbor etiquette. And yet my new neighbors see nothing wrong with blowing their leaves into the street and directly in front of my house!

My other neighbor is really interesting. He's about 80 and has a Japanese inspired backyard. He looks like William S. Burroughs, but he has these oxygen tubes protruding here and there so it's has a nice Blue Velvet touch.

daren