Midlife Madness

I’ve heard people say that as you get older time seems to fly by and in some ways that’s right but in other ways, it feels very wrong.

Certainly, the time it takes to do things seems to have increased considerably. When children were small we used to have a 5-second rule, you know when a biscuit falls on the floor for example but I must confess we’ve had to lengthen that – no way on earth can we bend down even with our oohs and aahs as ageing joints creak, and get back up again in 5 seconds so now we have a 30 second or so rule depending on where the dropped item is relative to our position.

Almost all daily tasks seem to take a bit longer – just a bit but when you add all the bits of time together well I suppose time is flying as there is less free time in the day. I can assure you there is no such thing as a ‘quick’ shower or indeed a quick anything but one of the longest most drawn-out activities is managing to leave the house.

It sounds so simple – you decide on a course of action whether that’s a walk or a visit to the shops and then you prepare to go. I mean I have to confess that sometimes making the decision can take a while but that’s not the major problem – the real time-consuming part comes after you’ve made the decision – it’s all the actions you need to take to make that decision a reality and actually leave the house.

Let’s be honest its hard to be spontaneous when you have to find a coat, boots, scarf, gloves, hat, umbrella and possibly add a few other layers as well. Each of these involves a decision and that is a lot of decisions. Raincoat or warmer coat, Uggs, wellies or some other type of footwear. When it comes to accessories – do you match or just go for warmth – this is the best option at my age. Then of course you might need to gather bags if you are going to the shop – maybe you are depositing bottles to recycle on the way (which is guaranteed to delay departure significantly) maybe you have coupons to use. Oh, my goodness, I know that they save money but invariably when I take ages to find them, they are out of date anyway!

But one of the biggest bugbears for us is the keys. House key, car key, front door or back door all seem to present much more of a challenge than they should. Yes of course we have a system for keys! We have this great little hook system and when we come into the house we put all keys on the hooks. So, it is a complete and utter mystery that whenever we want to find said keys they aren’t actually on the hooks! Strange because we all swear blind we left them on the hooks so we must simply put it down to gremlins!

Then, as we can all acknowledge the need to save money and energy in the home, there is always the last-minute dash around the house to turn off lights or heaters. Money needs gathering too – mostly these days it tends to be cards – which of course are all neatly gathered together in a purse or wallet but you do then have to find said purse or wallet which usually involves further searching and let me tell you if you do all this while dressed to cope with chilly weather it is enough to cause you to break out into a hot sweat.

But of course, we eventually get ourselves assembled and then guess what – it’s taken so long we need to go to the toilet again.