Vanity is Highly Over Rated When You Are Fifty

I used to be all about vanity and looking like a million bucks.

Now I am just grateful to wake up every morning and still have all my teeth.

If I had to pick my failing "vanity" qualities they would be (in this order) :

My hair seems to get more gray by the hour.

The lines on my face are getting deeper than the Grand Canyon.

My eyesight is so bad I need binoculars to read a paper back.

I used to worry about getting older but now that I am, I worry about not being around to get OLD.

My daughter constantly tells me how great I look and act...but I know teenagers, it's a ploy to get more money out of me and seems to be working out great for her.

When I was younger (in my twenties) it would take me exactly an hour and a half to get ready to go out. I can now roll out of bed, take a shower and be walking out the door in twenty minutes.

Dang! I obviously had way too much spare time in my twenties.

Now I have no shame in putting corn pads on my feet that have been pounding restaurant floors for over 32 years before I slip into the most comfortable pair of shoes I can find.

I don't have a second thought about wearing support stockings when my legs are killing me...heck, I've SLEPT in them before when my legs are killing me.

The Sock Shop in Griffin is a great place to buy really "Cute" glasses for $2.99 so you can read your kid's progress reports from school or the directions on the back of a box.

I have fumbled my way through my new job without my cute 'specs' long enough. The print on the credit card receipts at my new restaurant is so tiny you would think they are national security documents. I have entered a couple of them wrong and after having to ask one of the young whipper snappers that I work with to read me invoice numbers more times than I am sure THEY want to count, stuck my glasses in my apron tonight when I left for work.

The first time I went to enter a tip with my glasses on I thought I was on the wrong screen. I had previously memorized which buttons to hit without having to read what they said. Now that I could SEE , the information looked new to me and I had to take my glasses off to see if it looked like the same lines of blur I was used to. YEP.. it was the right screen I just never realized it was an actual prompt screen.

Dang it's hard growing old with grace and SCREW the vanity part. I did my check out tonight right the first time (for the first time!) with my glasses on and saw what I was missing....the eye sight of my youth and the vanity I used to treasure.

So what I am getting older...at least I am around to GET older.

Bring on the corn pads and the support hose...bring on the heating pad and the back ache medicine. Give me a pair of glasses and some comfortable underwear, sensible shoes and I am good to go another forty years (I hope.)

As long as I don't find a curly hair growing out of my chin or feel like sitting in a recliner every day from dawn to dusk...I guess I should feel pretty good about myself.

If the past year didn't kill me...being fifty should be a breeze.

Don't even get me started on Menopause! God's little private joke of "Hot- Cold." Lets see a man make it through THAT travesty without whining like a baby while pulling the covers off at night and then getting up to find another blanket.

Damn you Adam...why'd ya HAVE to eat that stupid apple?