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Broke
Wife, Big City
Pills
and creams! Pills and creams!
By Aprill Brandon
Last
night, my husband and I had a small dinner
party. Just a few friends, some good music, a delicious meal and a few
(dozen)
bottles of wine. It was a wonderful time had by all.
Cut
to this morning, when we woke up exhausted
and suffering from indigestion, a major headache, and sore muscles
(from the
effort of cooking...COOKING!). All of which we remedied by swallowing a
ridiculous amount of pills with two gallons of black coffee.
Oh,
the joy of growing older.
I'm
not quite sure when it happened, but at
some point, our bodies stopped functioning on their own. Now that my
husband
and I are in our 30's, it seems they require aids on almost a daily
basis in
the form of over-the-counter pills and creams.
For
example, over the years, our medicine
"cabinet" has slowly turned into a medicine "drawer," going
from a bottle of aspirin and some vitamins that expired in 1998 to the
following: Maalox, Pepto, Pepcid AC, Advil, Tylenol, Tylenol PM,
Ex-Lax,
Ibuprofen, One-A-Day vitamins, B-Complex vitamins, Fish Oil
supplements, Tums,
Metamucil, Midol, Rolaids, DayQuil, NightQuil, Zicam, Caladryl, Icy
Hot,
L-Lysine pills, four varieties of allergy pills and a heating pad.
And
that's not even counting our anti-aging
regiments, of which mine is comprised of various expensive anti-wrinkle
creams
and fancy lotions designed for every inch of my body, and pills and
powders
designed to amp up my metabolism, which decided to screech to a halt
sometime
around 2008; and my husband's, which is comprised of Chapstick and a
bar of
generic soap.
And
while we have thus far avoided actual
prescriptions from doctors, I realize that day can't be too far behind
judging
from the ever-growing pharmacy popping up in my mom's house and the
arsenal the
majority of my friends are building against depression and anxiety (or
as my
friend Michelle recently lamented, "Pills and creams! Pills and creams!
That's all my life is now!").
Even
sleeping can now be a dangerous activity.
We have not insignificantly injured ourselves more times than I care to
remember simply because our neck was tilted two degrees the wrong way
on our
pillows all night.
It's
official. Our bodies have betrayed us. Or as
my husband summed up, "the older you get, the angrier your body
gets."
Oh
sure, I realize some of it has to do with
lifestyle choices. We still eat like we did in college, exercise is now
considered doing laundry (in our defense, we do have to climb stairs to
get to
the washer) and "oh, I'll just have one glass of wine" is not in our
vocabulary.
But
still, it's hard to come to terms with the
fact that I can no longer treat and/or neglect my body horrifically
without
consequences. Circle of life and junk, I suppose.
Now,
if you'll excuse me, I have to run to the
store to buy some more Aleve and that old people yogurt that helps you
poo.
Can’t
get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until
next week?
Check
out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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