Opening My Door to You

Imagine for a moment that someone rings your front doorbell. You go to the door and peer outside to see who it is. If it’s a friend you open the door wide but if it’s someone you don’t know too well, you are more cautious. Blogging is a little like that. Every day I open my front door to NanaHood for you to come in and visit. Sometimes I share what I consider to be important information with you (like reminding you to get your mammogram) and other times I make trivial conversation and hope you don’t notice the house is a mess.

I try to be a good hostess and steer away from anything that might upset you. I don’t use my blog as a political platform. I do my best to stay positive and look on the sunny side of life, but you know what…I am not Mary Poppins. I am not happy every day and I don’t believe that “Just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

If you did a broad overview of several hundred blogs and scanned Facebook a couple times a day you might think that everyone is happier than you and has their life all together. Don’t believe it for a second. Everyone has problems. There are no perfect families and no one is happy every single time they post a blog or a status update, no matter what they say.

So why are their so many “Happy Blogs” and “My Life is Wonderful” status updates?

Because most of us only open our front door wide enough to let you peep into our lives. Each human being on the planet has their own set of problems to deal with and most of them are just too personal to blurt out on a blog or status update. Besides, some things were meant to be private, although you would never know it by watching shows like Jerry Springer. Anyway, I believe there’s a time and place for everything but telling the world my problems on my blog or on Facebook is like going to the water park and watching people walk around in bikinis. TMI, ya know what I mean?

I’m saying all that as a warning. Today I’m opening my front door a little wider and sharing something a little more personal than I usually do. Let me preface it by saying, “Getting old sucks.” I don’t like that last word and for years I fought a losing battle by telling my kids not to say it but there are some things that truly do suck and getting old is definitely one of them.

I know. I know. The alternative to growing old isn’t a good one and I am grateful for every single day the good Lord gives me, but I could do without a few of the inconveniences. Like when I drink a glass of ice tea and have to trot to the ladies room every 5 minutes. It sort of makes me NOT want to drink ice tea, or anything else for that matter.

The last few weeks I have felt really bad/old and after several tests and a trip through a CT machine that made me feel like I had entered the Twilight Zone, I was diagnosed with something I can hardly spell, so I sure can’t pronounce it. It sounds like “Divers Tick You Light Us” but is spelled Diverticulitis.

Anyway, it sucks too.

The doctor described it this way, “Remember how bike tires used to have inner tubes? Well, your inner tube/colon has some places that are not so smooth any more. In fact, they are puffed out and filled with infection. They could blow but I don’t think they will. However, if they do you will have severe pain and you should go straight to the E.R.” Or something like that.

The bottom line is my inner tube ain’t looking so good anymore. Thing is, I can’t take my colon into Bob’s Auto (where I get my tires) and have it patched. Nope. Only get one colon so it’s real important to take care of it. There’s a really fun test (sarcasm overload)  that when you get older you should have every so often to make sure your colon is healthy, and yes I have had mine thank you. I just haven’t had one for awhile. I expect that will be soon on my list of things “I need to do but REALLY don’t want to” list.

Maintenance is getting to be a full time job.

After the doctor gave me the inner tube news I came home and threw myself a pity party, the kind where you lay on the bed and cry and then try to hide the fact you’ve been crying. “What? Me crying. No, I’ve been chopping onions and my eyes are watering. I AM FINE.”

Pity parties are not fun, not productive and usually give me swollen eyes and a headache, but occasionally I indulge in them anyway. Do you?

So I’m lying on the bed feeling sorry for myself and pouting because I have “Divers Tick You Light Us” and it’s an old person’s disease. And I feel bad. And no one is around to feel sorry for me or bring me chicken soup. And it sounds like something my grandmother would have had. (Oh wait…I am a grandmother)

I am old, but guess what? I want to get older.

And because I want to get older I will take my medicine (minus the spoon full of sugar) and do what the doctor tells me to make my inner tube as healthy as it can be because as much as getting old sucks, I know it can always get worse.  My mom never got the chance to get old. She died of colon cancer at the age of 51.

Funny thing though, she has been gone over 20 years and I can still hear her voice. If she were here I know what she’d say, “Eat some prunes, put on your big girl panties and quit your whining. You have a wonderful life.”

And I do. It’s not perfect. My yard is not filled with beds of roses…it actually has a whole lot of dog poop (so be careful where you step), but it’s still a good life.

I have to go now. It’s time for a nice, cold glass of Metamucil.

Oh, by the way, would you shut the front door on your way out and come back and sit a spell again real soon.