15 Years

   I am married to a woman, Doralyn, who is almost fifteen years younger than I am. I did not set out to marry a woman fifteen years younger but fell in love with someone who laughed at my jokes, was beautiful, loving, cared about my life and the people in it, gave of herself freely, read my mind, and, most importantly, kissed Syd. The fact that she happened to be fifteen years younger was irrelevant.

No age difference....right??

   Usually, the age gap is inconsequential. Many of our interests are the same and the ones that aren't only serve to keep us balanced. 
   Physically, I have always been pretty active and would guess that I am on par with men who are fifteen years, or more, younger. Mentally, I am slowly passing over into the "senior" zone and this is where likely the age gap makes itself felt the most. 
   I forget, she doesn't. I have been cast adrift in a sea of technology, she sails that same sea effortlessly. She cares how she looks. Me, not so much.
   The age gap also means that I have had fifteen more years of life experiences. I witnessed the Beatles. She sort of heard about them. Often I have found myself making cultural references about things she was never around to experience. Or possibly even care about!
   That fifteen year difference has also led to interesting relationship observations, particularly when we look around at the other people in our lives and consider their age differences.

My son, Bryant, in the middle.

   This same fifteen year gap exists between my oldest son, Bryant, and Doralyn. Then there's the aforementioned gap between Doralyn and myself. After that, there's another gap of the same length between myself and Doralyn's mum, Marlies. Finally, were he still alive, there would have been the same difference in ages between Doralyn's mum and my dad. At the same time that our age difference seems so viable, it is almost impossible to imagine any of those other people in our lives with the same age gap being paired up together!
   Another thing which never occurred to me when Doralyn and I started this journey is that I am going to be retired long before she is. At this point, I am actually only about a year and a half away from either full or semi retirement and Doralyn will still be heading off to work every day. Then, by the time she's ready to retire, I'll be almost eighty. Hard to say what kind of shape I'll be in as we're trying to enjoy our retirement together!
   As much as I've been talking about this fifteen year difference, I am also a firm believer in "you are as young as you feel". This and the fact that, physiologically, people age at totally different rates is something I place some faith in. What seems like a tenuous fifteen year age gap may, in reality, be more like a five year age gap. And that's workable, right?

My Dad, Doralyn, myself, and Doralyn's Mum. LOTS of 15 year gaps there!

   I also tend to define my age somewhat by the peer group I feel as if I belong to. I have been working at the same place for almost thirty-five years and have always considered my co-workers as being part of my peer group. As the years went by and the ever-expanding group of co-workers became younger, I still considered them part of my group. Occasionally, however, I'd find myself having a discussion with a co-worker about one of their parents and then realize that I was older than that parent! Yet, in spite of this, I still identify with the co-worker.
   Family-wise, I am part of "The Kids". There is the matriarch, Marlies, and then "The Kids". I tell myself that I am part of this group and then along comes my brother-in-law's wife, Sabrina, whose mother, Naheed, must obviously be  part of the older group, "The Parents". Naheed, however, is the same age I am! So, this "fifteen year" deal gets a little complicated sometimes...
   All in all, I think about this age difference very little. At the same time as I might be planning for the future, I am not wary of it. As much as possible, Doralyn and I take care of each other on a daily basis with little regard as to how old we are. There are old souls and there are young souls and I think that, soul-wise, we're right about the same age!
   
   
   
   
     

You WILL Scream About Ice Cream!

      We don't eat a lot of ice cream around here but occasionally we buy it for special occasions (hence the "occasionally") and this past Mother's Day weekend I picked up some Breyers French Vanilla for dessert.
   Now we didn't actually get around to eating any of it but the other day Doralyn spotted me coming upstairs with the tub, planning on a bowl of it for myself. She had one of those omg kind of moments and told me I needed to watch this video while I was eating the ice cream.
   She then proceeded to sit beside me and my bowl and play this video for me. It was a ten minute video of some guy who had discovered that Breyers Family Classic ice cream (the same kind I was eating) does not melt! He had taken a bowl of Breyers and three other bowls of very well-known ice cream and left them all out, uncovered, on his kitchen counter for a couple of hours. The three other bowls of ice cream had become blobs. The Breyers, however, remained essentially unchained, retaining its original shape. 
   The fellow on the video then went on to leave all four bowls out on the counter for a full twenty-four hours. At the end of that time, the Breyers still had neither melted nor even changed shape!
   It gets worse. The man leaves all four bowls out on the counter for a whole week. At the end of this time, the three bowls are still blobby messes but the Breyers has now developed blackish, mouldy spots!
   By this time I had finished my bowl of Breyers but was now trying to figure out a way of un-finishing it, short of sticking my finger down my throat.
   Later, it occurred to me that we now had this unfinished tub of Breyers to dispose of and why not do the same little experiment ourselves? So about 6:oo p.m. last night, I left the uncovered tub out on the counter. This is what it looked like when I set it out....
   

Kinda looks like ice cream, right...?

    And this is how it progressed over the next twenty-four hours....

Kinda still the same , 4 hours later

Very much the same, 24 HOURS LATER!

    Full disclosure here, I lied when I said "ice cream". It's not actually "ice cream", it's a "frozen dessert". If you had sent me to the store and asked me to pick up a "frozen dessert", I'm not sure what I might have come back with but Breyers French Vanilla probably wouldn't have been it...

Safety precaution

Ooops, I said "ice cream", didn't I ?

    I took a pic of the ingredients label. I'm not a scientist so I'm not sure what the offending ingredients are which cause this frozen dessert to not melt. Whatever they are, I imagine ski clubs could use them come summer!

So if you don't want something to melt,
put plenty of THIS  crap in it

    I finally threw out the Breyers today. Because you want to know, it had gone very soft, sort of the consistency of stale Cool Whip. I kind of wanted to stick my finger in it but was afraid something might bite me. Totally unaware of the local by-laws for disposing of bio-hazards, I simply deposited it into the garbage.

Falling Down

   This morning, while Doralyn was in the shower, I headed downstairs as I do every morning and made a hard left into the kitchen to....wait.....that's what I would have done if, in fact, I had actually been at the bottom of the steps when I made that hard left! 
   Instead, I stepped out into mid air, sure that my right foot was about to make solid contact with firm parquet floor, when this was unfortunately not the case. Yes, I began my day lying in a heap on the floor just outside the kitchen door. 
   A quick bodily check and I was soon back up on my feet, almost none the worse for wear. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to disguise the sound of a 226 pound man doing a face plant on a hard wooden floor at 5:56 a.m. when the only other person up and moving in the house is safe in her warm shower and Doralyn soon appeared, in a towel and still dripping, saying it sounded as though I had fallen down the stairs. I confirmed that there was a reason for this, she asked me if I was okay, I confirmed that I was, and she headed back upstairs. Likely wondering what fate had brought her.
   This is not the first time the exact same thing has happened. A few months ago, I pulled a similar maneuver going down the steps into the lower level of our house. I thought I was already at the bottom when I wasn't, yet. Again, that time, no major damage done. I at least partially thank many years of playing sports as a kid and then as a young man for my ability to "take a hit" and survive, relatively unscathed. This is fine but, intellectually, I know I can't keep doing this.
   After my first little mishap I found myself consciously making sure I had actually reached terra firma pretty well every successive occasion I had for walking down stairs. In the mornings, I generally find myself going down the stairs in the semi-darkness and when I think I have reached the bottom I will actually take one more exploratory step, just to make sure that bottom is, in truth, where I'm at. This morning, I did not do this for some reason.

   

   I'm going to blame the cats. On my way down the stairs this morning, two of them rushed past me, ostensibly to begin their day but possibly as part of their deadly plan to distract me from my normal stair routine. I found myself bemused at their fervour and looking forward to their antics and totally entered a different realm of cognition. Hence the disaster which befell me.
   Part of this, I'm sure, is the aging process. As a young man, I really don't remember ever falling down stairs, at least not stairs that were clear of ice or obstruction. These days, it seems like a fairly common occurrence. I even occasionally lose track of where I am when I'm walking up the stairs---somehow or other, in mid-step, I'm not quite sure where I need to put my foot next. I have to concentrate more than I ever used to, and this seems all wrong, dammit!
   Okay, so this is a cautionary tale, I guess. Like a minor car accident reminding you to drive a little more cautiously, I imagine that this morning's mishap will linger long enough to remind me the next time to make sure the ground has firmly come up to meet me before I then move on. Other than that, we might be looking at either kiddie slides or parachutes to get me out of the house in the morning!