All right, already, I'll admit it ... I'm not as young as I used to be.

In my defense, however, I must point out that no one is. Unless yesterday was one's last day, today everybody is that much older. Even my mother, about as adamant a woman as ever walked the Earth, has stopped complaining to me about getting old, because what she gets back is a reminder of the alternative.

We live. We age. So what?

So what?

So what?

I'll tell me "so what?"!

So what is, at fifty-five, a cold ricochets off my kids, hits me in the chest and lays me low for a week and counting. Okay, so it probably did close to the same when I was twenty-five, but back then I didn't have advanced years to blame for the rotten-ness of feeling. Now I do, so I will.

I have spent the last eight days being equal to a smoldering pile of waste matter, hacking my lungs out every three minutes, getting close to no sleep at all, feeling like my throat is lined with barbed wire, and alternating between producing enough sweat to spin the turbines in Hoover Dam and being chilled to the bone.

There's nothing like being sick to make me acutely aware of every geezer cell in my body. I'm tired and I'm grumpy and I'm achy and I'm sluggish and I'm not one bit fun to be around ... how many dwarves is that? ... and I feel about a hundred and two, which just happened to be my temperature the other day.

I'd love nothing more than to climb into bed for a few days, ignore the world, and wallow in my phlegm, but I can't do that, can I?

Nope. I have two little kids (the little germ carriers, and also sick) to feed, clothe, bathe, cajole, minister to, comfort, etc., etc., blogs to write, five dogs, a giant tortoise, three cats and a rabbit to see to, a husband who requires little, but still some, maintenance, and my own geezerness that must be addressed every day if it's to be kept at bay. (That treadmill of mine needs treading, and I'm convincing myself that the 45 minutes I spend on it will heal me.)

I'm asking for indulgence, and hoping my admission of 'not as young as I used to be' will inspire you to cut me some of that proverbial slack that can be such a comfort to the old and feeble ... the definition of me at the moment ... and let an unsatisfactory blog post, or two, pass without getting me too much flack.

I have some good stuff in the works ... honest ... so if you hang with me, even in my reduced state of myself that is mucus madness, there will be something of value here again when it has passed. Which it will.