Things I Swore I'd Never Do When I Was Young That Now I Do All The Time

The title of this post is pretty self-explanatory, so I guess I'll just plunge right in.

1.  Wear knee-high stockings. As a young woman, and even into my thirties, I despised knee-highs. I saw them as the height of laziness and a sign that the wearer had just given up on fashion and given in to pragmatism. Fast forward a few years (and I do mean FAST) and here I am. Not only do I wear knee-highs with dress pants, I wear them with SKIRTS, no less. Granted, it has to be a long, full skirt with no chance of revealing the tops of the knee-highs, but it's a skirt all the same. My mother's voice is ringing in my head, "Famous last words. . . ."  

On occasion I do still put on a pair of pantyhose (and maybe some Spanx) but those occasions usually involve a photograph or a funeral where I'm going to see a lot of people who I've known all my life and who made fun of me for being fat when I was young but now they are old and fatter than me so I want to look as skinny as possible, HA!  But those occasions are rare.

Exhibit A: Here I am wearing Spanx and pantyhose, trying to hide what I lovingly(?) call my fat apron. (Scott has this look on his face because his hand is on my rear end.)








2.  Talk about and become obsessed about bowel movements, hereinafter referred to as BM. (I promise, no photos of this one!) I can remember just sitting back and rolling my eyes when Grandma or Mother talked to me about their digestive problems. Grandma always had constipation issues and Mother's leaned the other direction. I thought, "Why are these people so obsessed with going to the bathroom and so anxious to share all the details?" Now I know. About ten years ago I had a severe bacterial infection (Samonella) which caused a bleed from my colon and a trip to the hospital by ambulance. This experience activated my BM radar. 

Then about four years ago I sprained my ankle at a July 4th celebration and also injured the opposite leg trying to break my fall. This kept me off my feet for over a week. Before I had recovered, I came down with the flu, including a secondary bronchial infection. This knocked me down for another week or two, during which time everything slowed down. As an added bonus, because I had such a terrible cough from the bronchitis, the doctor gave me codeine (which causes constipation as a side effect.) Before I had fully recovered from the flu, I started having terrible pain near my bladder. The doctor did blood work but found no infection. She gave me Vicodine (yes, more codeine, remember the side effect) for the pain and told me to come back in 30 days. Fast forward, more tests, more Vicodine, referred to specialist, more Vicodine, biopsy, ultrasound, CT scan. Three more months of this. Finally the radiologist who read my abdominal CT said, "You know, you are really constipated."  Eureka! Four months of pain, thousands of dollars in health care and I found out I'm full of Sh**! 

Since then my BM radar is always on red alert. I never want to be in that condition again. So I am obsessed about it every day and now follow all the health tips to keep things moving.


3.  Wear a muumuu. I always believed that unless you lived in Hawaii, muumuus were not acceptable attire until you were about 80 years old and only then because you were in the nursing home and muumuus made it easy for the attendants to dress you. It was the same message as knee-highs. You had given up on fashion and were probably too fat to fit into anything else, so you wear a muumuu. I will now admit to owning and wearing two muumuus, ordered from The Vermont Country Store catalog, which offers a wide selection.

I have the snazzy little number at the bottom, left of the first page, "Muumuu on Safari" AND the one in the bottom, middle of the page above, "100% Woven Cotton Muumuu with a Unique Border Print, " both in red. I only wear them around the house, usually right after I get out of the pool. However, the highlighted recommendation on the first page says otherwise. Here is the text since you probably cannot read the scan. It is from Dr. Elizabeth G. (a doctor, so you know it's true:) "Your cotton floats and muumuus, pretty enough to wear 'out' and so marvelously comfortable, are what I live in when I am at home." There you have it -- doctor-recommended muumuus. I don't wear mine "out" yet, but you never know; if a doctor does it, so could I.


4.  Talk about how old I am and how things were so different when I was young. Wait. . . just go back to the top of this post and read again and it will click.


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