I am my Mother

The pace at which I am becoming my mother is accelerating at an alarming rate. You spend your entire youth swearing that you will never do the things your parents do. Teen Angel is at that point now. Little does she know that no matter how hard she tries not to, one day she will be wearing stretchy pants, singing too loud and dancing in her underwear with the dog. Somewhere in your mid-thirties you realize that you WILL be just like your parents and do the same stuff that seems so dumb when you are a kid. I remember the exact moment I first realized my evolution into Baby Ruth had begun. I was trying on shoes in a department store and couldn’t decide between two pair. One pair was cute as Johnny Depp’s butt but uncomfortable. The other pair was low to the ground and a little on the frumpy side. I was leaning toward the frumpy, comfortable pair when it hit me like a sledgehammer that that was the exact choice my mother would have made. “*@$&!! This was NOT going to happen”, I said out loud to no one in particular. It was the beginning of a transformation that sneaks up behind me when I least expect it and scares me so hard I almost wet my pants. The leaky bladder is part of the evolution, too. Sigh. I was hoping to skip that gene.

The latest slide into the Baby Ruth zone started two weeks ago. Every night I wake up because I’m too hot. I’m hot….all the time…even when other people aren’t. I know it’s July in Kentucky, but this is a different kind of hot. My core temperature has a mind of its own. I’m kind of young for menopause, but it appears I could be an over achiever. I can’t stand the covers, can’t stand the sheets and certainly can’t stand the dog curling up against my backside. Whew! He’s going to have to find a spot at the end of the bed. Hubby has always kept the house pretty chilly at night, and he’s still comfortable. I, on the other hand, am sweating like a thief in Sunday school. The problem is twofold, because the moment I wake up in the middle of the night, my bladder kicks in overdrive. Gotta pee it screams, so I have to stumble in a daze to the bathroom, praying I will not whack my toe on the bedpost I know is dangerously close to my path. I also have to pray that the TP wars in our house will not leave me empty handed because NO ONE is going to wake up and bring me toilet paper no matter how loud I yell. I narrowly managed the five square minimum at three o’clock this morning. As I climbed back in bed after my potty trip I thought about how nice it would be to keep a fan by the bed. My eyes flew open and I almost swore out loud. Ahhh! Fan by the bed?! There she is again. My mother, creeping up behind me. Can stretchy pants be far behind?