The high cost of maintenance is driving me nuts! Not just the monetary cost. It’s just so darn time consuming. I know there are products and promises out there that are supposed to help relieve the pain and offer hope for the aging population. They lie.
There is no hope for reversal of ravishes of time travel. What I have right now is the best I’m ever going to have. No matter how crazy it sounds, I’d better not quit my feeble efforts to take care of what’s left. What I see when I look in the mirror is far better than it will ever be in the future. Nobody’s fooling me!
Every single thing I do, just to maintain what’s left, is entirely too time consuming. There’s got to be a short cut. I stay in a constant run. When darkness arrives each evening, I’m too pooped to even complete my bed-time beauty routine, much less read a book, or watch a movie on TV.
I guess the maintenance period has been creeping up on me for years, but I have been too busy to notice. Well, it’s finally caught up with me. All the time and effort put forth through the years, thinking I was going to get better, be more limber, define my waistline, lighten the darkness under my eyes, remove the “liver spots” on my hands and arms, and wake up glowing, and skinny was completely useless.
I’m wide awake now and I can plainly see I haven’t accomplished a single one of those sought after beauty tricks. Not that I haven’t had constant encouragement. Every single magazine I pick up offers suggestions for staying young and beautiful.
Face creams, massage, sun-spot lighteners, hair color, diet pills, Botox, eight glasses of water a day, and all the exercise in the world isn’t going to accomplish what the ads and nutrition books herald. To do or not to do, that is the question. Should I just give up and let nature have its way?
No. I think not. I’m not quite ready to accept defeat. I’m still reading stuff like The New You, and the The Number One Beauty Treatment in the Country, and those before-and-after bodies still catch my eye.
O The Oprah Magazine and More are both a little more truthful than some of the others geared to foolish younger women, but even they preach standards and goals I’ll never reach. Besides they have an age limit on most of their studies about maintenance and beauty tips. I don’t know why I still subscribe.
I have been devoting way too much time to evasive goals set by the beautiful people. Maintenance is the new benchmark. Finding time is the goal.
Recently I’ve been plagued by medicine my dentist gave me to swish around in my mouth for two minutes each morning. You’d think that would be a snap, but nay. I don’t have two minutes to swish metallic tasting stuff every morning, I’m a busy woman. Besides, it’s making my teeth turn gray. It’s supposed to be filling in around where my gums have receded. Okay, so it just takes two minutes, but two minutes is two minutes when one is on this side of the proverbial hill.
There’s also the stretching I must do before I can even get to the bathroom. Six pages of stretching exercises prescribed by a physical therapist allow me to walk reasonably well, once I get going. I’m supposed to hold each position 30 seconds, before I even think about swishing into the bathroom.
The doctors at the diagnostic center said I have fibromyalgia, but I’ve been trying to ignore the miseries described in the pamphlet he gave me. I know I have arthritis. Surely that’s enough knowledge. Arthritis thrives in my fingers and toes, and lately it’s trying to invade my knees. Sometimes I think it’s migrated to my lower back, but I’m trying to ignore that, too.
In other words, I’m doing quite well for my age, or so I am told. I’m also told I don’t have the crippling kind of arthritis, but nobody told that to my fingers and toes! My fingers are frightful to look at, and won’t unscrew anything. My big toes are blessed with a plastic joint and a little screw and simply rebel when stuffed into high heels. I’ve been forced to reconsider those “dreadful grandma shoes” that I once swore loud and long to never wear.
Most days I don’t have an hour to stretch. I just do the few absolutely necessary moves to get me going. After coffee and the newspaper in my recliner, I usually head to the fitness center, if I don’t settle down to write an hour or two. Have I mentioned – I’ve been told I have a high tolerance to pain?
I have thought my maintenance routine was working reasonably well for nigh onto 13 years. Thirteen lying, cheating years! Just look at all the time and effort I’ve wasted, not to mention the money for special shoes and stretchy pants. All this time, I’ve been thinking I was going to at least get better, but now I’ve come to realize – youth vanished long ago.
Patsy Pipkin is a freelance writer, columnist, and author. She lives in Searcy, Arkansas.