Celebrating Life and another day older

It appears that the blog has taken on a new life of it's own. Here I am, ready to complain about every aching joint, gray hair, lost tooth, wrinkle, sagging body part, loss of senses, loss of financial status, and whatever else there is that I was not prepared to face, and with one sentence, my lovely daughter in law, Lili, changed the course of my thinking. As she is celebrating her 39th birthday, celebrating the completion of 2 triathalons, she says, "Sorry, was I supposed to complain?" I must say, this blog is not really about complaining, it is about sharing and learning. It is about living the life! It is about celebrations of life, of which aging is one.

I must admit that when I think of where I am now, aging, with it's gray shadows of death looming ever too near, I can only remember the good times with the decadent birthday cakes and homemade icecreams, gawdy Christmas trees with their luring packages, expensive weddings with ice sculptures, prime rib and more champagne than is legal, weddings with just a keg of beer and only a wreath of flowers to adorn the bride's hair. I remember the gentle baby shower gifts for our growing families, a baby's quilt comes to mind. More than anything, I remember the friends that have come into my life along this short and joyful road. Some of my friends are gone, too many to be quite honest, but many remain to tell the tales.

One of my most favorite friends is Olivier Bourgoin. He has been involved with my family for about 30 years. He gave my oldest daughter, Sandra, her very first paying job when she was only 14! As friends, we have shared our ups and downs...we won't go there now because I am trying to keep this short and enjoyable for all.
Olivier, at 54, is a wonderful father, an amazing business man, and a very competitive hockey player. He travels the world, fluently speaks 3 different languages, and is very knowledgeable on just about every aspect of celebrating living on this earth. Olivier has agreed to join me on this blog. He is the very celebrated Wine Guy in San Antonio. His website is http://thewineguy.alamodining.com. Please check him out. I promise you will not be disappointed because he is so much more than the website. I will be starting a blog page for him right here so you will be able to talk to Olivier about wine, hockey, music, Paris, traveling the world, parenting multilingual children(he has 2 of those), the Olympics...whatever...he's the man.

Hurricane Ike has slipped into the Gulf of Mexico. Since I drive a school bus, I have been asked to be on standby for evacuations, if necessary. Please keep these families in your thoughts and prayers. Not only do they stand to lose every possession they own, they also will be without very important creature comforts, like water, bathrooms(toilet paper), refrigeration, clean sheets, and the list goes on, until they can return to some sort of normal life in their own homes.

Aches and Pains

No one ever told me that it was going to hurt. No one told me that one day when I awoke and I was 42 years old and every joint in my body ached that the definition of my ailment was known as "aging" or that I was premenopausal and I should brace myself for the worst was yet to come. Well, that is not exactly true. My younger sister by 18 mos laughed at me and said, "Sheila, you are getting old!" Of course I didn't believe her, I thought she was being mean and that the pains would surely subside in a few days. Sure enough, she was right. The pains never left, they only got worse. When I mention "the pains" I am sure you understand. I constantly hear my co workers discussing their pains, mostly joint pains. "My knees hurt, my hips ache, my back is killing me, oh what I would give for someone to massage my feet, I am going to have my rotator cuff replaced, my knee replaced, or hip surgery, back surgery." We all sing the same song, "We hurt."

Now this subject of aging is a bit delicate, unless you are one of us, The Aging Ones, then it is open season on the different topics that ail us. Mostly, we laugh at ourselves and say, How did this happen? When did this happen? Remember when? We still think of ourselves as being 32 or maybe 45, but NEVER over 60. OMG, heavens NO! That is OLD. Most of us live in our glory days of high school football, swim team, tennis team, cheerleading, marching band, twirlers, UIL competitions that we won, first loves, or loves yet to be conquered, our first day on the university campus. Exhilirations! Acceptances! No one warned us that these wonderful moments would be short lived and that too soon we would be aching as our bodies aged.

When were were still in school, growing into adults, we studied Language Arts to help us communicate with the world. We studied Math so we could learn how to construct our world, we studied History so we could understand our past and connect it to our future, we studied Health so we could understand our young bodies and how they worked. Never in one of the paragraphs I read did I ever read, "At some point in your life, you are going to realize that you are aging because you will start to feel pain as your body starts to break down as it ages." I was never told that the sprained ankle I received while playing tennis in the 8th grade would be with me for the rest of my life as a swollen joint that would ache every time the weather changed. I have often wondered about our football players who had broken limbs, broken noses, dislocated joints. Do they hurt more now than ever before, or more that someone who didn't suffer a broken limb? No one warned us that the State Championship had a defining price other than the glory of the day.

Aging is not all about the pain. For many of us, there is more wisdom, humor, patience, understanding and love on new levels. I would like to discuss these and other qualities of aging in other posts. Please feel free to share you aches and pains with us or your wisdom and humor. That is why we are here.