An Overloaded Hard Drive

It's happened again, the thing that I've dreaded

Up from my desk wondering where I was headed.

Where was I going? What was my task?

I just can't remember so don't even ask.

My brain's overloaded with mathematics equations,

Trivia tidbits from long gone occasions.

President's names in alphabet order

The length in miles of the Mexican border.

The piece that I played at piano recital,

One line from some movie -- just the line, not the title.

French tenses of verbs, conjugations in Latin,

A cocktail dress that was hot pink satin.

"Nice to see you again," I stall and I bluff.

From where? What's the name? Don't remember that stuff.

Not senile, Alzheimer's or other such doom,

I just have a feeling my brain's out of room.

All that data in there slows down the synapses

My hard drive needs purging before it collapses.

The brain is like a computer they say,

So where's the delete key hidden away?

Attention Silicon Valley nerds --

With you I'd like to have a few words.

Forget gizmos and gadgets. They've grown to be dull.

Develop a program to sort out my skull.

Nothing painful or evil -- no robots please.

But something to access my data with ease.

Organize, file and maybe a copy.

How do you download your brain to a floppy?

That's your assignment. Call when you're through.

I hope I recall what I asked you to do.

Bless Me Father....

Stories where heroes resolve tough situations by summoning wizards never really interested me. My fascination with Santa, the Easter Bunny and other childhood sprites was short lived. Magic --both the stage show and romantic varieties -- doesn't intrigue me.

I have always been the practical one. The one people look to for the cool head in a panic situation. The one wearing sensible shoes -- a term my mother used for footwear, yet laden with multitudes of midwestern character values.

As I age, the assumption is that I become even more firmly rooted in reality. "The facts, ma'm. Just the facts", as that Dragnet detective used to say. That's why the following confession ranks right up there with the time I had to tell Father Matthew that I let James Becker feel me up at the CYO dance -- embarrassing but necessary. So here goes:

Feeling hungry, I review the contents of my fridge hoping to concoct something edible. My fridge is the place where Tupperware goes to die. So I open the crisper. What a misnomer --there's nothing in that little drawer but a bag of brown liquid that I assume was once mushrooms. I scan the inside door. Several bottles of salad dressing stand at attention, none of which contain enough liquid to dress a salad in more than a g-string.

My brain -- making excuses for my inability to frequent the supermarket -- sends a message to my stomach that I am no longer hungry. I return to the mind-bending crossword puzzle.

Fast forward 30, maybe 40 minutes. I feel peckish. Apparently my stomach didn't actually buy the lie told by my brain mere minutes ago. Where do I head? Back to that very same refrigerator recently dismissed as a disaster area.

Was I expecting a loaves and fishes type miracle? Did those pathetic leftovers somehow morph into fine cuisine? Did someone stock the fridge while I was trying to figure out 12-down? Or worse, am I losing my memory? To cover this culinary dementia, I conjure up the Fridge Fairy. Picture Tinkerbell in fleece. Her super powers make veggies fresh again, raise leftovers from the dead and replenish the food supply.

I know she's not real. Credit me with some sanity. Just a light-hearted indulgance and a much needed release from wearing those blasted sensible shoes all my life.

Now before you pooh-pooh this idea, think of the last time you searched for your keys or glasses. How many times did you go back to the same spot thinking that perhaps you'd find it this time? Now if you had your own Fairy.....

The Greatest Thing Since....

"It's the greatest thing since sliced bread". You hear people say that all the time. Frankly, I never got that excited over the pre-cut loaf. Convenient -- yes, but to use it as the standard for all future inventions...?

Now that I'm getting older, I'm more likely to say "it's the greatest thing since the elastic waistband". Now that's an invention!

An article in the July/August 2007 issue of the AARP magazine was about belly fat. Apparently, up until age 40 our hormones control the allocation of fat and keep it away from the belly. Once the estrogen and testosterone decrease the belly is fair game. All those fat cells pack up and migrate to the midriff settling in Spare Tire Town -- kind of an anatomical Grapes of Wrath.

So I'm not mistaken for Tweedledum, I diligently count crunches, speed walk and confess to succombing to the hype of the latest ab busting infomercial. Oh, I wear the same size as a few years ago. Hips and behind haven't widened or spread (well, maybe a tad). The problem lies in buttoning, snapping, zipping.

Long live the elastic waistband! Breathing...bending...eating allowed!

At That In-Between Stage

Remember as a teenager when you weren't supposed to behave like a kid anymore but weren't yet treated as an adult? One day you're told that it's time to put away the Bosco. The next day your request for coffee is denied because you're not old enough. Yet, once you reach 18 the child/adult confusion ends. At 18 the law says you're an adult.

Now as a fledgling 60-something I'm at that in-between stage all over again -- this time without the zits and far less angst. Here we are, millions of Baby Boomers, no longer young but not yet ready or willing to be labelled a senior.

There isn't a year when one legally becomes a senior. AARP reels you into the fold kicking and screaming when you're facing the big 5-0. Movie theaters give discounts at 62 or 65. Well, those are officially stated ages and it's probably not a good example. Usually the kids selling tickets should be home studying for SATs and to them anyone with so much as a strand of gray looks old enough for a discount.

I went to a step class recently and was determined to keep up. I haven't felt so much knee pain since high school. That's when Sister Agathona made me kneel in the corner after she caught me rolling my uniform skirt higher than the mandated, good-girl level. Alright so I overdid it in the step class. I tried an exercise class geared to seniors thinking it was more my speed. While my knees were pain free, I barely broke a sweat. That in-between stage rears its head again.

That certainly is middle age I see in the rear view mirror, but at 61 I'm just barely reaching late afternoon, not the sunset years.

So who are we 60-something Boomers? Fogies? Elderly? Geezers? Gammers (definitely one of my favorite, albeit somewhat obscure, words to use when 'geezer' just won't do)?

Can you honestly use any of these adjectives to describe Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Hillary Clinton, Dave Barry, Mikail Baryshnikov or the majority of we 60-ish folk?

We need to coin a new word for we ageing Boomers. One that will carry us through these in-between years -- or at least til we're ready to answer to senior.

Any ideas?