older?

Oops: scroll down for an entry I’d accidentally written but not posted over the weekend, with sock photos. (I guess that explains the lack of comments.)

The weather has finally changed from the anomalous sunshine of the last month back to something I’m told is normal Dutch weather. In other words, gray. I do wish it had waited another week or so; not only will I be in London the second half of this week (yay London!), but Rudder has his 100km race on Wednesday.

I have no idea why anyone would schedule a race on Wednesday. Then again I have no idea why anyone would want to race 100 km. I think Rudder and everyone who’s signed up for the race is insane. What’s worrying me more than a little is that I once said exactly the same thing about rowing a marathon. That would be some years and … let me see … four marathons (two erg, two water) and innumerable half-marathon erg pieces ago. If you ever hear me considering it myself, someone please take my oars away. Actually, I suppose (grudgingly) that it might be barely possibly with months and months of preparation. If you ever hear of me planning to do it with two weeks’ notice, as Rudder is doing, take my oars away and then hit me over the head with one. Repeat as necessary to keep me unconscious until the race is over and the danger is past.

In other depressing news, today I heard someone two years older than me refer to herself as old(er). (Read it actually, in an LJ community.) Technically I supposed it’s true that 42 is older – older than 41, at least. I did not argue, being of the opinion that oldness is not entirely bound to chronological age and that someone who thinks of herself as old probably is. This came right after a rereading of L.M. Montgomer’s A Tangled Web, which had me spending a lot of time ignorning her Very sad. Does that mean I should stop doing cartwheels and handstands now? Or reading children’s books? (My uncle actually did ask me why I read books aimed at children, which was odd since we had been talking earlier about his reading Harry Potter. For some reason it was more depressing to be asked that question by someone I’m actually related to; I tend to expect my family to understand about books, though since he doesn’t reread books and our taste is orthogonal except for travel books, I probably shouldn’t be too surprised.) At any rate, there is hope for the woman who’s old at 42; she was writing to a work-out forum for advice on beginning an exercise program. I don’t think the aging process is only a physical thing, but it’s a start.