Hello. I am OLD.

No shit right?  Everyone is getting older but at some point, we get to be the person we remember looking at and thinking of as “the old people”.

36 is only a number.  I never really celebrate birthdays as it’s no big deal.  A day to mark that I survived another year.  I’ll probably never “grow up” but thankfully I’ve matured a bit.

I used to exist for weeks on end on three hours sleep and food that was about as nourishing as a cinder block.  I have gotten about 7 hours sleep since Monday and it has all come between phone calls and meetings.  30 minutes here, an hour there…  Danny Glover as Sargent Murtaugh said it best, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”  What’s going to happen in 5 years, 10 years or more when I still insist on living like I did when I was 20?

I’ve been riding in to the airport with Dale all week so my rental car has been sitting in the hotel parking lot since I got here.  It has snowed three times and yesterday it got warm enough to melt a tiny bit of it but then we got 4 inches of snow again last night.  Today it won’t get above 25 degrees.  So that means that the sun-warmed snow melted and ran down into every crack and crevice in the car and froze there last night.  Just in time to get a good layer of crusty snow on top of it.

This morning Dale calls me and tells me he won’t make it to the meeting.  We have been pushing the limits on time/sleep/body so I don’t blame him at all.  I probably should have blown it off too but this meeting was with the BIG boys from DC.  So I get dressed and go down to the car where I have to do my best to crunch through the snow drifts to get to the car.  I have to punch the car and beat it with my elbows repeatedly to break the ice to even get it open.  Once inside I start up the heat on the windshield and rear window.  I break out the ice scraper and start attacking the windows.  I’m not wearing my jeans and warm shoes, I’m wearing thin slacks and slippery dress shoes because I’m meeting the Airport Administrator and a few of the TSA headquarter guys.  So I’m cold, tired, haven’t eaten in two days, the wind is ripping through my clothes, I’m slipping on the ice (never fell) and attacking an ice-bound car…  All I could think is, “I’m getting too old for this!”  I am the old guy fighting the weather to get to his soul-sucking job where he’s overwhelmed and under appreciated instead of blowing it off and going back inside.  I am old.
And maybe I am.  But I’ll still take these winter troubles over the hellish heat of a Florida summer…