Old

It was my dad's 65th birthday on Saturday. That means he is all old and stuff. I will add some nice pictures as soon as I can spend some quality time with the scanner....

We had a great dinner at a steak place, per his request. It was very far north from where I live (I won't specify since I'm trying to be, like, anonymous, but if you know me maybe you can figure it out).

I haven't been up to that area in years, not since I looked at an apartment up there back when I was in college – I was trying to find an apartment with a yard for my big dog, and you pretty much had to go up there to find that.

Back then, there were those apartments and the headquarters of some corporation (which grazed and/or grazes livestock on its massive campus, for some sort of farming tax break) and absolutely nothing else. Now there is an entire really gorgeous area with condos and faux-urban streets and tons of restaurants and stores and trees with Christmas lights. I thought it was great. I would totally move there if it wouldn't make my already extremely excessively obscenely long commute at least twice as long.

The dinner was really great. A sat on my lap and ate more of my delicious duck (I suffer from steak aversion ever since the tragic steak overdose of 2003) than I think I did. And a lot of my mother's steak as well. I would wonder how she stays so skinny if I hadn't seen firsthand how she does nothing but run around maniacally for all hours of the day. Sometimes if she has nowhere to go she'll just run around and around in circles.

Anyway, shortly after we sat down, a woman came up to us and asked me if I was, well, me. And since I am me, I said yes. It turns out that she was my dance teacher from over a decade ago. This probably won't be of interest to anyone but D, who took dance with me (and is in fact where I met her fabulousness), but there ya go. It was so random and funny. I thought it was so nice of her to actually come over like that. She looked very different from what I remember her but still very slender and dancer-like. She said she is now a stay-at-home mother to her 8- and 3-year-old children. She seemed very happy.

This is all well and good, but dude, how are people recognizing me from back then? For crying out loud, I like to think I look DIFFERENT, and maybe even BETTER. (Because, for all that I danced back then, I didn't work out and primp like I do now, and I like to think that maybe just maybe I am THINNER and possibly PRETTIER but c'mon who am I kidding?)

Plus I think I haven't aged well in general, like all the stress over the years has shown itself around my eyes, and my predilection for straw-usage has left its mark on my upper lip as if I were a smoker, and basically I'm just plain OLD.

And, to be perfectly honest, I have, in typical holiday fashion, gotten really fat over the last month. As in...oh, I can't believe I'm admitting this, but if I can't tell the truth to you, random Internet stranger, can I be honest with anyone????...I have gotten fat to the tune of about 10 pounds in the last month. I would be worried about that – I AM upset about that – but to an avowed yo-yo dieter like myself, that's just par for the course. Just, alas, the HIGH part of the course. If she could but have seen post-surgery me....! Give me a month and all will be right as rain. As soon as I get rid of that awesome gift basket from one of my clients. It's got almond toffee AND walnut fudge! So nice when people know the real you.

So, I was a little bit sad that I was so incredibly recognizable even after so much time. Okay, people I haven't seen since the seventh grade have recently recognized me, but still. Still.

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Meanwhile, I went in for a bunch of medical-type stuff and tests last month. No concerns; just a general wish to be more attentive to my health following the great health scare of 2007 (just as tragic, but with more psychotropic medication, than the steak incident of 2003). They told me test results would be available at a particular website using the provided username and password, right about...now.

I tried logging in tonight for the first time.

The website won't load and won't load and won't load. Maybe they're upgrading because it's Sunday night – that's reasonable, right? – but it would be nice to know if I'm dying before I toddle off to bed.

Life is just way too hard sometimes.