Two Things

They're even related too. Seriously.

My little sister posted a bit on Facebook referencing her age the other day — that she’s middle aged. God DAMN that made me think. Sad thinking? Eh, not so much. BUT if my baby sister is middle aged, and she is, what does that make me?

An exchange from one of my fav movies, Postcards From The Edge, comes to mind. The character Suzanne is the 40-ish actress, daughter of Hollywood Royalty. Doris? She’s the Royalty. This bit is from the midst of a post rehab (Suzanne’s) argument they were having (and yeah, this is biographical type stuff written by Carrie Fisher — one of my favs).

Suzanne: Ma, I'm middle-aged.
Doris: Dear, *I'm* middle-aged.
Suzanne: Really. And how many one hundred and twenty year old women do *you* know?

I don’t know any 110 year old women so....em....I guess I’m late middle aged now. Yep, I’m OK with that. I do wonder how I got all the way from Hot Child in the City to Grandma’ Hands though.

Second up:

Just so you know, the 7th floor cafeteria at Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary is NOT actually on the 7th floor.

Mind you, if you board the small, crowded, claustrophobic fit inducing elevators and press seven, that’s where you’ll end up. If you take the stairs though, the 7th floor is actually the 9th.
How’s that work? The real 7th and 8th are OR/surgical, floors. Why is that set up like that? No fuckin’ clue. I couldn’t catch an up box with few enough souls on it (me alone would have been acceptable. Anyone in excess of moi....eh, too tight) so I took the stairs.

OOF!  At the real, not fake, 7th floor I sat down for a wee break. Serious, it would have been a teeny tiny one. Really!

No sooner had I parked my keester on the landing, a white robed babe steps into the stairwell and starts quizzing me. She’s asking me what I’m doing there and am I OK/am I sick..

I told her "deaf here, speak slowly and I’ll try to lipread you. BTW, I’m just taking a wee upward climb break."

She starts in on this big ass harangue about how I shouldn’t take the stairs — I could get hurt ('I'm deaf NOT an invalid and I am NOT old and feeble. bitch.' was what I was thinking) and, she continued, no one would know or find me for a long time (should something bad happen) AND she’d ride the elevator up with me (this in response to my telling her "no can do on the upwardly mobile sardine can").

The hell? This was a serious drama mama. She seemed not to get two real basic dealios:

1) SHE found me and I’d not been sitting more than 30 seconds.
2) If SHE, a total stranger — a stressing angry one at that — rode up in the crowded box with me...well, boy howdy, I think that claustrophobic fit would be a total lock.

Chick was NOT into that whole listening thing. Clearly a devotee of Fran Leibowitz.

“The opposite of talking is not listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.” 

Em, much as I love Ms. Leibowitz...WRONG!

In any case, I nodded (but did not smile), got up from my all too temporary resting place and said thanks but no. She was still talking as I walked off but, hey, I’m deaf -- if I don’t look at her , I don’t know she’s speaking. So, not rude then. Awesome!

OK, I did add in, as I ascended the stairs with her staring after me "look, I'm EVEN holding onto the stairrail. I think I'll be just fine. Cheers then." Snark, it's what's on tap.

Up to the ninth floor cafeteria then, where I got a lovely Vietnamese Veggie Roll Up with a nice glass of pomegranate juice. YUM!