I'm what?...Old?

How the hell did that happen?

I'm faced with this ever-quickening realisation that the "youthfull" years of my life are rapidly transforming into my "middle" years. Some of you may already state that I reached the middle years a while ago but denial gives me the right to challenge these realists. I still feel like I'm a twenty-something but my body apparently wants to show me, and everyone else, that I am "my age".

First, somewhere in my thirties, it was the "odd" gray hair which could be easily mistaken for the light bouncing off my jet black hair. However, these gray hairs quickly established themselves as the "salt and pepper" look which became increasingly difficult to hide with wet-look hair gel. Now, as mentioned in a previous posting, I must "maintain" my appearance with the use of permanent hair colourings. To make it worse, I must now move the "5 o'clock" shadow back to 3, as these gray hairs have chosen to invade my beard as well.

Then there's my skin, once tanned and flawless, mared only by the occasional scar left as a reminder of heroic feats, or stupid decisions, you know, the things we do when we're are young. Now I find old people things on my skin. Bloches and blemishes, lumps (eeewww) and strange liney, wrinkle type things around my eyes.

And of course failure. The body type. It is becoming harder and harder, nie on impossible, for me to doing the things I once did with ease. Sports, now takes me longer to recover than to actually compete. Food, well you can forget spicy, the carefree ingestion of exotic foods has been surpassed by the cautious ordering of "mild". And onions, let's just say close family and friends have banned my consuption of them.

All these indicators, my body has so "caringly" chosen to show me that I am firmly ensconced on the path of the middle aged, are, whilst devastating in their own rights, nothing compared to the constant reminders thrown heartlessly by my own family, you know, the people that "love" you.

My fate can be summed up in the, now too-frequently use, term of "Hurry up old man!"

Ahhh, the holi...

Hold the phone! Holidays? What holidays? I was convinced I was s'pose to have two glorious weeks of school holidays which, as my also-a-teacher wife glumly imformed me today, finish tomorrow.

Impossible. How can sixteen (16) days vanish faster than my daughter can inhale a Tim-Tam? (no savouring the flavour for that girl - just inject the chocolate I say) Sixteen glorious "non-contact" days in which I was to recouperate from the ravages that were term three. Sixteen bliss-filled days in which I could meander from one distraction to the next. Sixteen days where, should the mood take me (or my darling wife nag long enough), I might look at, and even attempt, one of the many jobs listed in the "Holiday jobs to be done because-you-do-nothing-during-the-damn-rugby-season encyclopedia" (the list was superceeded many years ago). What happened to my sixteen days?

Sure, I did have a few days where I slept in and the occassional night when I was heading to bed as my loved ones were waking up (no, I'm not addicted to MW2. I can stop any time I want too!). I did manage to look at, attempt, and even complete a few jobs listed in the "encyclopedia". The swimming pool is now full with clean sparkling water, the new pool pump is installed and doing it's job, the pool garden is looking weed free and uncluttered, and the pavers in the patio area are now waterblasted clean. But all that arduous manual labour only accounts for about four days of the sixteen.

So the breakdown looks something like this:
4 days - mindless video games, television,  DVD's, and internet
4 days - "encyclopedia" jobs ie manual labour
4 days - taxiing my children to/from jobs, parties, friends, movies, house sitting, shopping
4 days - unaccounted for

Four whole days, that's 96 hours, or 5760 minutes (I hear you ask "What about the seconds? Please tell us how many seconds." And so, for dramatic effect... the seconds), or 345600 seconds (see, it was worth the build up), of my life I've lost! Unable to recover (unless someone loans me a working time machine). Four days I may have been marking (but wasn't). Four days in which I could have been planning (but again, wasn't). Four days I should have devoted to the betterment of my teaching practice (but obviously didn't).

So the only obvious answer to account for the "lost" four days, the one which makes the most sense, is... I was abducted by those damn aliens (again, hopefully no probing happened).