Falling Behind

My butt hates me.  How do I know this?  Because it's trying to rebel against me in every way it possibly can.  It doesn't want to stay in place anymore.  It's resistant to exercise, and it doesn't want to follow me around like it used to.  It drags around like a sack of potatoes tied to my ankles.  In fact, I think it wants to BE with my ankles because it's always reaching for them.  Gravity is a b*#%$. 

I feel like I fight the battle against the sag every stinkin' day.  Even things that aren't heavy start to sag after a certain age.  I carry no excess weight in my arms and yet the skin between my armpit and my elbow jiggles like hospital Jello.  We all have our body issues, but sister mercy, they get harder and harder to fight after age forty.  I battle it as best as I can, but it takes so much more effort as you get older.  The techniques that used to work don't.  I have put on and taken off the same five pounds for several years now, and while running several miles a week and cutting out junk food used to be enough to shed those pounds, it just isn't anymore.  My metabolism left town about six months ago.  Packed up and left in the middle of the night with no note and no forwarding address.  Just.  Gone.  Cue the country music.  And everything I've read lately tells me that I'm going to have to step it up if I want to combat that issue.  I've got to run farther, longer and harder.  Snap.   By the way, did you know that running a brisk three miles is the best way to learn that your bladder isn't as taut as it used to be?  Kind of puts a whole new meaning to that phrase, "There she blows!"

It's recommended that I work on strength training, which I used to do but then fell out of the habit of doing.  I've gone back to working with weights, and boy, do they make them heavier now than they used to.  Tip:  Working out around power lifting men can be a real blow to your self esteem when you can bench press only fifty pounds.  So can partially wetting your pants when you're running down the street. 

The other thing about working out when you get older is the grooming skills that come into play.  I used to be able to throw on any old pair of shorts and some running shoes and take off.  Now, I have to make sure there's a really good sports bra in my gym bag, otherwise the girls are joining my butt down there at the ankle party.  And since body hair now grows at an unbelievable rate due to lower estrogen levels, I have to shave my armpits every time I turn around.  To add insult to injury, I have to put on my reading glasses in order to see if they need shaving.  Without my glasses, my armpit is as blurry as a blowing snowstorm.  Yet another betrayal of this vessel I walk around in every day. 

Mama was right.  It's just one thing after another as you get older.  The body has free will and it wills itself to do something, anything other than what you want it to.  I look at young perky 20 something's these days and just laugh.  I want to run up and tell them to enjoy that perkiness while it lasts because one of these days someone on Bourbon Street will yell at them to show their ta-ta's, and they'll have to lift up their skirt to do it.  Gravity gets us all at some point, and it doesn't stop until we quit breathing.  Any day now, I expect the skin under my chin to start drooping.  Right around that spot where I keep having to pluck that stray hair that grows in every month.