Appreciate it now! (AM)

Chickpea has been doing me the excellent favour of looking after Newbie one day a week while I do some volunteer work. Yeah, I'm a pretty fucking great person.

It is really nice of her to do it, take time out her week on the regular like that. On the flip side she does get to hang out with the cutest effing 18-month-old living today, so really who is doing who the favour?

The other day she was over in the morning and I was getting ready to leave, performing my morning ablutions and what have you.  I have pretty great light in my bathroom, which is an excellent feature for a bathroom to have; it means time spent in there is pleasant and that performing grooming tasks that require good light is much easier. It also means that standing in front of the mirror in the morning you get a pretty good look at yourself. So as I left the bathroom I said to Chickpea, "God, I wish I'd appreciated my skin when I was younger." To which she yelled, "Appreciate it now!"

Of course. Of course! Lately when I look in the mirror and feel dejected at the natural aging that my skin has undergone and that is evident for all the world to see, all I think is, "Ugh, here it is. The signs of aging. And it's only going to get worse. If only I knew what I had when my skin was younger and better." What a total idiot! It's only going to get worse. Now is the time I should know what I have! Yes, I should have known then, but I also should know now! This is as good as my skin will ever look again, probably. Unless I get rich and can afford some great skin care regime. But even then, that will only help if I get rich pretty soon cause even some fancy skin care isn't going to take many years of my face. I know that.

Having an older sister is great, because they go through all the things before you and can give you excellent advice! Sure, I felt pretty stupid for not realising that I should be appreciating all the benefits of relative youth that I was lamenting not appreciating before, but mostly I just felt glad for her sage advice. And I barely even resented it when she didn't give me my change after buying vietnamese salad rolls later that day.

Still what I do with that advice, I don't really know. I guess I should just stop feeling bad about my mild wrinkles and feel happy that they're still pretty mild. Yeah, that's it. At least with age and wrinkles, wisdom comes too.