Cold Weather Helps Show Age

Ever notice how the older you get, the deeper you find yourself buried under the covers in cold weather? My husband is hiding under a sheet, a cotton and linen bedspread, an acrylic double-thick blanket and a giant handmade comforter made of brocade and stuffed with cotton batting. Yes, cotton batting...not polyester fiber filling. It's heavy and awesome unless someone barfs or poops on it because it CANNOT go in the washing machine. It's a nightmare to clean. I'm a little off-point now. Where was I? Oh, yes. The cold.

So, each year I notice new little aches and pains and inability to jump out of bed to face the morning. Now I sort of sling my legs out of bed one at a time after forcing the ton of above-mentioned bed coverings. I half suspect that next year I'll be lifting my legs off the bed and setting them on the floor one at a time with my hands and maybe the year after that I'll need one of those handy dandy hand grip triangle things that dangle above my pillows from the ceiling by a chain. I used to wash the hand prints and foot prints and "Lord knows what" prints off of my walls about once a month a few years ago. Then I noticed it was like once every 3 months by the time I turned 40. Now I delegate either to the kids who are in super deep doo-doo with me to wash....or I tell my husband, "Hey, I think we need to paint the house."

It's not that we get lazier as we age. I think it's a combination of "I just don't have the time anymore" and "I don't give a shit that much anymore." I figure at this point in my life, if someone comes over and judges me to be a slob because I've got kids who are freakin' normal and don't believe that gravity actually works and therefore find it necessary to walk down the hallways of our home with both arms extended, hands open and dragged along each wall, then PISS ON THEM. I don't want them visiting me and my grubby walls anyway.

And the colder it gets, the louder my bed calls me. I try to ignore it. I usually make it until around 8pm sometimes later. But if all the stuff on t.v. is stuff I've seen before or if one of the kids decides that it's not "my turn" on the computer...then I usually give in and answer my bed and all 78,000 covers on it. I dive in....as carefully as I can so as not to accidentally smush my already-hibernating husband with my very muscular body that is now well-insulated under about 60 pounds of warm fat. Also, I don't want to puncture a boob on his really bony hips. Oh, yeah. He's THAT guy with the never-ending metabolism. (Mine hit a brick wall right after I got married.)

I love the winter weekends when I can sleep in. Hell, I'm actually turning into one of those bad mothers who decides, "Oh, they're not learning shit in school anyway," and slaps off the alarm clock and keeps the kids home for a nice sleep in followed by a day of resented home-schooling. But that's okay. As long as I'm rested and they pass all their exams we're good. But I need to start closing my bedroom door so that I don't hear that bed calling more and more frequently. Because honestly, once the rainy season comes, all bets are off.