Lightweight

I am, without a doubt, much more fit and healthy than I was, say, eight years ago. I moved out to California and gained a lot of weight. A lot. I was running from something or running to something, but the end result was I spent way too much time on my ass in my apartment. Alone. Eating. Now I'm fifty pounds lighter with way more muscle and I can climb the stairs without getting winded.*
   But I am slowly feeling the grind of the wheels of time.
   You know how I know I'm getting older? It's not the more visible gray strands in my hair or beard, or the lines at the corners of my eyes. It's not the slightly bulgy vein on my calf or the occasional gray chest hair - which I pluck out when I find it. No, it's a more depressing, obvious sign.
   I can't eat nearly as much as I used to.
   I'm not talking about my teenage years, when every boy is a human garbage can, or even my early twenties, which is just the teen years with permission to drink alcohol. No, I mean my late twenties, when I could still pack it away and yet I was old enough to know good food from bad. Cheap-ass prime rib at the run-down casino across from Cesars Palace? No thank you, I'll have plate after plate of Spanish tapas for free at a happy hour.
   Man, I used to be able to eat. Which was, of course, part of my big-fat-sucker problem eight years ago. But now not only am I not able to eat as much at one sitting, I'm just not inclined to either. I used to want to at least sample everything at a pot luck dinner. Now I just want my salad and some meat and cheese. maybe a little of that Jell-o ring with fruit and I'm finished. Time was when we would go to a Vegas buffet the idea was to double your money: if you paid ten dollars to get in you had to eat at least twenty dollars worth of food. Wholesale, not retail. Now I don't even want to go near the buffet, couldn't care less.
   It's insidious, this getting older. It takes what used to be a defining characteristic and turns it into a liability. Which, in this case, ain't so bad a thing. I don't need to eat like that any more, and I'm glad I don't.
   But still...


* which is good because the elevator STILL isn't fixed