A new gift from aging

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Yep, that’s me on a ladder painting. This picture is from 2021 when we moved here. Painting takes a lot longer these days.

Aging has brought a new phenomenon. I can’t realistically predict how long it will take to do something. I forget I’m old. Everything takes longer. Getting the dang ladder out of the garage takes longer. Half hour projects are around two hours. How did this happen and I don’t like it.

Yesterday I had a few short things to do and intended to read the rest of the day. Nope. The reading and relaxing part never happened.

When I was younger my projects were interrupted by frequent trips to the hardware store to pick up something I forgot (or previously bought and forgot where I stored). I’m much better at that now. I do more planning that includes getting out all the materials I need at least a day prior to the project.

But for every new skill, an old one slips away. My perception of time is murky. Change a light bulb?  It takes 20 minutes to get the dang ladder out of the garage without dinging my car. It’s hanging on hooks to keep the garage floor cleaner. Perhaps I should back my car out just to be safe. No, I can do this. I lift the ladder and remember how heavy these suckers are. When did aluminum get so heavy?

Now I must find the replacement bulb. We have lots of bulbs but never the one we need. Oh no! Not a trip to the bulb shop! (We have a specialty store that only sells bulbs and batteries. It’s wonderful! The guys are wonderful! They don’t laugh when I use works like thingie and dohickey)

Since I’m going to the store, I may as well get pizza for lunch. (Is this scope creep or my stomach’s tactic to procrastinate?) Changing a bulb could realistically take two hours to a full day. Maybe more. Pass the pepperoni!

64 thoughts on “A new gift from aging”

  1. I know exactly how you feel. I don’t kid myself with insisting I can accomplish tasks that I simply am not capable of doing anymore. Other seemingly unrelated matters also arise. I have two “live far away” children, no other relatives except their children, live alone, with no social network. Fortunately I can sniff out a crooked repairman or contractor who tries to take advantage of senior citizens. But what really infuriates me is that when starting what should be a simple task or adjustment , it must always be preceded by half a dozen unexpected things that emerge and must be fixed before I can even get to the thing that’s gotta be fixed in the first place. New phrases have entered my thoughts: It’s really not needed , don’t worry about it, you don’t like that anyway , good enough is good enough , who cares, costs too much anyway. I think some of those Eastern religions advocate “detachment from things.” I’m beginning to see some sense in that. I never open that stuck window anyway, so forget it.

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  3. I know exactly of what you speak…it’s clearly a contagious condition as I’m experiencing it with my own painting project. A whole day just to pick the paint and get all the tools together before I could even begin. Argh!

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  4. You describe so brilliantly that slowness that comes with aging, and how time seems to slip through our fingers. I feel exactly the same. These days time seems to just vanish into thin air, even if you don’t actually do anything special. Yet it still feels like I’m constantly busy, and never manage to do nearly everything I should or would like to. That’s just everyday life now. I often long for those days of youth when time still seemed to be enough for everything. On the other hand, at my childhood home, my mother also took care of all the everyday chores, so I could just focus on my own things. But back then, I didn’t really appreciate it fully—I just took it for granted.

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  8. I have a paint job inside the house and it is a crack across the ceiling. I bought a small ladder to do this as I didn’t want to bring the outside, five-foot ladder, out of the garage and inside. I also hang it on the wall and have to be careful not to hit the car. Anyway, the hairline crack is now across the ceiling. I remember dusting with the long duster one day a couple of years ago and saw the start of a hairline crack and I got something to repair it, but haven’t done so as I wanted to paint right away. (Note to self – repair the crack, paint another time.) I am wondering if it was a result of the minor earthquake we had a few years ago, or we also had a meteorite strike in a Michigan town, not near me, but the meteorite was very large and fell apart when it hit the ground. I was sitting in the kitchen one night, in the Winter, when all of a sudden the side storm door rattled hard. So, my radar went up and I went and turned on the floodlight in case it was someone causing trouble. I came back to the table and on the next newscast they said “if you felt that big boom and your house rattled, it was a huge meteorite that crashed down.” Parts of the meteorite fell onto a frozen lake and people were scrambling to get a piece of it as a keepsake. I just thought of this story today as I heard a meteorite struck someone’s house and deck. They smelled the sulphur and called authorities about it.

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      • I had hoped to get a handyman and have been looking for one for a year since the first handyman charged me double and didn’t do what he was supposed to do, the next handyman I learned was in prison twice for armed robbery, so he didn’t finish up everything and got belligerent, so I don’t deal with him. I have asked every woman I know who is single/divorced/widowed/husband is incapacitated and/or they have no children to help for handyman references and every one says “I never need anything done.” My idiot neighbor had someone mowing her lawn and a rock hit and smashed my basement window … I now have to get a glass company to replace the glass … she, of course, won’t do anything. Twice her contractors broke two different fences and I told her it was her responsibility or theirs to pay me to build a new one and she laughed and walked in the house.

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          • Yes, she claimed she didn’t know anything about the chain-link fence as it was a Lowe’s subcontractor installing her privacy fence.

            Yes, I do have a legal background and we were labor attorneys for management with a lot of client/companies in maritime or construction. So, I also know a thing or two about pulling permits. The first chain-link fence that they tore down I went to the City about it and asked to see the building inspector – he was out and the “very helpful” clerk got the paperwork out and said “oh-oh, it looks like they pulled the permit but did not get an original signature from you that you okayed pulling down your chain-link fence.” She probably should NOT have told me that. So, I asked for the building inspector to come to my house the next day.

            He got there, an ornery old man with a chip on his shoulder, who walked in my backyard and inspected the missing fence – said “yes, they tore down your fence all right, no original signature from you on the permit. By the way, you see the shed sitting over there – it’s on the easement, so I can make you take it down because it shouldn’t be there.” I said “my father put that shed there in 1966 or 1967” and he said “well it’s not supposed to be there, so are we clear on this permit and shed issue, as I have other appointments.” I wanted to keep the shed even though I didn’t use it, but had just repainted it and the handyman (former handyman who retired as he was legally blind), had shored it up as well. It blocked the neighbor behind’s yard. So I said “fine” and he left. A few months over we had high winds (39 mph) and the shed tumbled off its mooring, went across the yard and broke into pieces. Apparently my father had just put patio blocks, no rat wall and not embedded any of it into cement. I had told the neighbor she needed to pay for materials (new fence/poles) or her contractor did and she walked in the house.

            The other issue was she had leaf filters put in and the contractor whacked the split-rail corner fence and it fell down. I was inside at work (I worked from home from 2011 until 2024). The split-rail fence had been there since 1966 or 1967, put there by my father and had been perfectly fine. I went out to walk the next day, it was laying in pieces on the ground. I did not hear it happen, but the day before the contractors were there with ladders and materials when I returned from walking and “Leaf Guard” truck on the side. I told her and said “you need to contact them” – she laughed, so I said “you’ll pay for materials” – she laughed.

            I have no use for her, or for the City to be honest. And it was my dumb luck in both instances that I was the one forced to repair the damages. Yes, I did not need a new chain link fence, but if someone moved in and tore down the privacy fence, then I’d have to pay for a new fence (my half). I was annoyed – still annoyed at her stupidity. And annoyed about the broken window and having to pay for that … not an insurance thing either, but will pay out of pocket.

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    • Me too! I painted all the rooms where I could reach the ceiling. We have a cathedral ceiling in the family room and an open foyer so those had to be done by a painter. I was surprised at how long it took and how tired I got. The good part is that painting is instant gratification so it looked so much better right away.

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  10. I’m puzzled about how I ever found time to work 8 hours a day, as the ADL’s (Activities of Daily Living) seem to take up the whole day now. Just cooking alone, can fill a whole afternoon. What’s that saying – work expands to fill the time available….

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  12. For me, just standing up to do the task is a challenge. All my bones creak and I feel a bit like a rickety old cart wobbling along. I can usually walk it off but it is taking a lot longer to get the body into a condition where I can take on any task but a walk to the bathroom.

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    • My neighbor is like that. She recently had her hip replaced and that has helped but she gets stiff when sitting. It’s uncomfortable getting up so she sits longer and gets stiffer. We yell at her all the time!

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  13. Kate, I don’t know if I can say much more than Autumn… Pix is gonna need a pizza too! I do love seeing you on the ladder but please be safe. SSNS and I brought a BIG ladder in to replace a fan that was misbehaving. Dang, it pulled my shoulders out of wherever thay belonged!

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  14. Know the feeling well. Hubby won’t give in. Anticipated the bathroom would take a week……. it took four. The built in wardrobes were a couple of days……… read that as weeks……. but they were worth the effort

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  15. My husband and I do many house projects ourselves (we currently have several holes in the master bedroom’s ceiling so we can run the wires for a mini-split A/C unit) and they definitely take a lot longer than they used to. I’m pretty much ready to turn these projects over to the “professionals” but my husband keeps reminding me that he’ll do a better job (which is true). The good news is that all the trips to the stores for supplies usually involve lunch.

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  17. I hate when people say “age is just a number.” If only it were that easy. And the person who says it is usually under 50. But lady, how do you stay so danged thin? Aging is making it harder and harder for me to keep the pounds off. I can no longer eat goodies or junk food, and I’m still somehow putting on weight! I need your secret (or metabolism).

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  19. You said it perfectly! If there someone out there not experiencing this, I’d like to meet them and figure out how they’re skirting around it. I have a couple of rooms that could use a fresh coat of paint, but I haven’t convinced myself it is worth it. And that ladder hanging in the garage, I have one too, and it gets heavier every time I drag it out.

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  20. I feel ya, Kate! I call it livin’ in the slow lane, but truthfully I don’t know how I ever worked/got myself out the door in under an hour/got stuff done after supper/stayed on track, before I retired. Who am I now? 🤪

    Deb

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  21. I’m with Pam. Lots of projects on the list of things I ought to do, but probably won’t. Too much work just taking care of the foster cats. In between all of that, I’ll think about a project, but mostly I’ll think about a nap.

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  22. LOLOL Oh how I can identify with this post. My bedroom looks exactly like that and I think It might possibly have been started that same year…maybe even earlier!!🤫🤫

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    • Four years ago I could paint a room in 2 days max. Now it takes me 2 days to think about it, 2 days to get the materials together, a week to decide on the exact color and then I need a week to recover from all that planning.

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  23. You look fantastic standing tall on that ladder, Kate!

    Oh . . . the way we were. Youth really is wasted on the young. You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

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  24. You are not old yet. Old is when you get your materials out, realize you have everything you need or get whatever you are missing, and then look at them two days later and can’t remember what project you were going to tackle. Then, 2 days later than that, after you’ve put everything away again, you remember what the project was. Which is why it sometimes takes me a week or so from the time I’ve selected my project to getting around to even STARTING it!

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  25. I like the way you think……I’m going through similar stuff so I’ve just cut down on the projects. That means a lot of stuff that I SHOULD do, I don’t. Yes it’s a “cop out” but hey……life is a bit more simple because some of those projects really were just “keeping busy” things anyway and I’m busy enough keeping my brain functioning at my age. HAHAHA Anyway, I realized the other day that reality never really HIT me until now in my life…..I spent my youthful years never thinking about old age but now that its’ here – well – reality is almost TOO REAL! 🙂

    Hugs, Pam

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