Today I’d like to just share with you some observations on aging, really growing up a lot, becoming long in the tooth. It’s hard to come up with a palatable description for, uh, getting old. We’ll stick with the “tooth” phrase for my purposes today. You’ll see why later.

Speaking of palatable, I’ve experienced some food-related changes recently that I never expected. Celery once was a vegetable I tolerated, but avoided every chance I got. In recent months I’ve come to really love a crisp piece of celery. Just plain, no Ranch dressing or Cheez Whiz. And especially in salads. Maybe a little salt, but not always.

I credit my mom with this sudden love of celery. Mrs. Never Met A Veggie She Didn’t Like. To my credit, I still am pretty repulsed by the thought of eating a turnip. The day I start liking turnips will be probably about one minute before I expire. If then. ****shuddering at the thought****

And another dietary remarkability has occurred. My kids won’t believe this. I can hardly even bring myself to type the following words. But, here ya go: I now love peanut butter. On a spoon. Just plain old peanut butter. Let me clarify, I’ve always enjoyed peanut butter in, say, cookies. Just not eating it plain on a spoon in large quantities.

If you know anything about life at our home, you’ll know exactly who I credit with this anomaly. MY HUSBAND. For forty-six years I’ve watched him eat spoonfuls of peanut butter day in and day out. Never has a meal happened without some form of peanut butter being eaten. While I looked on in disbelief.

So the other night when I strolled into the living room with a spoonful of peanut butter and plopped down on the loveseat to consume it, the look on his face was priceless. Amazement, I tell ya. “Is that a SPOONFUL OF PEANUT BUTTER?” He then informed me he’d never found me to be more attractive. Or maybe I heard him wrong.

Speaking of attractive, we both recently joined the YMCA and had a Body Scan Fitness Analysis. Yep. We’re both rotund and in deep need of exercise and dietary adjustments. Will we stop eating peanut butter? Not on your life.

And then there’s the whole “heard him wrong” deal. I started wearing hearing aids a couple years ago. Life-changing and I have no regrets, even though I can generally hear every word the husband says now. 🤣🙄

These hearing aids are bluetooth ready. Bluetooth is such a curious mystery to me. Ideally I would be able to use an app on my phone via bluetooth and change the sound settings on my hearing aids. But, alas, not. “Incompatible android phone system”. I can use the app on my Wifi only Ipad, which I certainly don’t always have with me like a phone. The app does work on the husband’s Android phone. So we downloaded the app on his phone and since we’re nearly always together 24/7 I can use his phone to adjust the volume on my hearing aids.

And then one day the youngest daughter calls him. He answers the phone but can’t hear her talking. I, however, can hear her loud and clear from my seat across the room. He keeps looking at his phone, turning up the volume, frustration rising that he can’t hear her talk. “Good grief, DeWayne, I’m way over here and can hear her just fine, she’s talking so loud. What’s wrong with your ears?” The daughter is completely baffled and finally she just hangs up. Right there is an example of the curious mystery of Bluetooth. The phone call was received by my hearing aids through bluetooth. The hubby’s phone audibly rang. But only I could hear the daughter’s voice through my hearing aids. And from her phone she heard nothing except a faint but quite unpleasant conversation between her parents. So fun.

We changed some settings on his phone, and all was well. No more hearing his phone calls in my ear.

A few months later we found ourselves staying in a hotel near Death Valley on a fun road trip from California with my sister and her husband. Eating breakfast in a hotel is different during this icky pandemic and we had to eat brown bag food (I use the term “food” loosely) in our individual hotel rooms. But, hey, it came with the price of the room, no extra charge. We ate as much of the brown bag contents as we could handle, then DeWayne waited in the main part of our room while I went to the bathroom to get ready for the day. While sitting on the toilet with my own phone in my hand, likely doing the Wordscapes puzzle of the day, suddenly my ears were filled with LOUD, I mean EXCRUCIATINGLY LOUD music. AC/DC music from the 80’s rang in my entire head, shaking my brain to the core. I ripped my hearing aids out of my ears and went back to the main room to tell DeWayne what had happened. I thought perhaps someone in the next room was playing loud old music. There he was, sitting idly and innocently, just scrolling through his cell phone. “No I didn’t hear any music from the next room,” says he. I looked over his shoulder to see that a song was playing with no sound coming from his phone. He had no idea that the object he was looking at on his phone was accompanied by AC/DC’s loud rock tune “Hells Bells”. He couldn’t hear it. Because somehow, the bluetooth settings on his phone had randomly changed. And somehow, once again, the curious mystery of bluetooth was wreaking havoc on my auditory canals. Only I could hear “Hells Bells”. During my morning moment of serenity. 🙄

Another observation I can make about the whole “getting old” deal is that it takes a bit longer to problem solve. After this toilet-jarring head-exploding experience with Hells Bells, we finally, finally just had the brilliant idea to simply uninstall my hearing aid app from the Mr’s phone. Never again to be reinstalled. I hope. Android, please don’t disappoint me by some system update that reinstalls that app.

In summary, I now enjoy celery and peanut butter. And Bluetooth is still a curious mystery. And I’m still getting older. Who knows what changes are lurking on the horizon? Stay tuned. Undoubtedly there will be more.

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And, for those of you too young to have heard the phrase “long in the tooth”, I give you dictionary.com’s definition: “Getting on in years, old, as in “Aunt Aggie’s a little long in the tooth to be helping us move”. This expression alludes to a horse’s gums receding with age and making the teeth appear longer.” Well doesn’t that just scream “attractive”?