the natural aging process

Having children ages you. After four months of no sleep, longer if you count uncomfortable pregnant lady sleep, I am feeling and looking old--and I am not the only one. In the past few days we have had several instances that have confirmed that we are exiting the super highway of the young and sexy onto the dirt road that is decrepitude lane. It started the other day when a tree fell down on our street. It was "as big as a dinosaur!" and thus our street needed to be blocked off while it was cleared. H and Annabelle walked over to look at it and H stopped to talk to the young Vietnamese cop (I say cop now, not officer) that was on duty. H called him "anh" which is the polite way of calling someone in Vietnamese who is older than you, but not terribly older than you, and the officer corrected him "no, you can call me "am,"" which was the Asian way of saying, "you're the old one here, dude." H found this amusing and was telling me about it. "I'll do you one further," I told him. "I was at the HEB last week and this young man in his 20s called me "miss," and the first thing I thought was, "actually, you can call me ma'am." I actually wanted to be called ma'am."

Then Hyphen took Annabelle to the park and the next day was complaining (shocker) that he was still sore from pushing Annabelle on the swing, and was indeed so sore that it hurt to pick his nose. I wish I was making this up sometimes.

And the kicker? I have been wearing pantyhose to church, because bare legs just don't feel properly dressed to me.

But they are cute black pantyhose with a pattern, not nude sandal toes, and I was playing hide and go seek with a whole gang of three year old ballerinas the other day and I can still pick my nose just fine, so maybe these are just isolated incidents. Not Decrepitude Lane just yet, but can anyone can tell me how to make my way to Middle-Age avenue? Because I am definitely on my way.