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Library lady

     So today a co-worker who is — let’s just be honest here — 70 years old, gave me a serious run for my money at the library. Some guy was looking for a specific movie, which just happened to be located on the very bottom shelf, and I did one of those pretend searches for it on the middle shelf. She walks over and squats down like she’s going to give birth in some Third World country and finds it in two seconds. Again, here we are. Now I’m at home tearing open the cardboard box of a frozen pizza and she’s obviously at home on a rubber mat touching her big toe to her nose.
     I regularly call the doctor to renew my prescription for muscle relaxers, while it seems like the rest of the women on this ridiculously fit island drink hot tea and take a warm bath for their yoga-stressed muscles. Thank God my teeth are relatively good.
     It’s not easy to work with women your age and older who think nothing of drinking spinach shakes and lugging all kinds of crap around. If I tried half the stuff they do, I’d be holding on to the heating pad and begging for a foot rub 24/7, which I sort of do anyway for no real reason.
     I brought half a cheese sandwich and celery sticks to work for lunch today. I’ve been doing 30 minutes on the elliptical for a good three weeks. I eat kale at least once a week and I consider peanut butter in the same category as I used to put Snickers bars. Every morning I step on my digital scale and it tells me the same thing, “You are still a fat ass.” It’s got to be my age. And maybe the fact that I like Guinness.
     There’s so many diets out there now that I can’t even keep up. I try to Google them and then if they sound remotely circumspect, I rule them out, which pretty much means every diet found on Google is a bad idea. I like this plan.
     At this point I find it hard to tell people that I bring celery and raw fish to lunch. I think they must look at me and think, “Sure bitch, I know you’ve got Twinkies and Hershey bars in that bag.” I find it best not to discuss food choices in public.
     Besides all of this, my hair is gray, I’m pretty sure I’ve got toenail fungus, and I have a stubborn hair just under my right earlobe that won’t be tamed by any razor.

     So how do I manage to maintain a sense of self without self-loathing? I don’t really, but I do know that what I have to work with isn’t what everyone else has to work with, and we’re all awesome so that means I’m also awesome. Thank God for the internet, which routinely tells me I’m awesome and that I suck. I choose awesome.

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