There are many joys of aging, such as discounts at stores and services, using it as a convenient excuse for being forgetful, and smiling that few thieves would know how to drive my stick-shift VW Beetle.<\/p>\n
I can also stop obsessing about everything I wanted to do before I was 70, because, well, it’s too late now. It’s a procrastinator’s dream in a disguise of gray hair.<\/p>\n
But there are downsides, too. Like dealing with Medicare, memorizing the pharmacy hours and suffering heartburn after eating three pistachio donuts with lime frosting.<\/p>\n
Or figuring out why the keyboard on my laptop (yes, it’s old, too) doesn’t work so well. Four keys have stopped working: The 1, Q, A and Z. Yes, the left-hand row of keys. So I carry around a big detached keyboard to plug into my small laptop. Sure, I could solve the problem with a new laptop, but remember I drive a stick shift, wear saddle shoes from the ’50s, and call it spaghetti, not pasta. Change comes hard for me.<\/p>\n
What also comes hard is sleeping.<\/p>\n
Not falling asleep. I do that easily. It seems I am always tired. It’s staying asleep that is the challenge.<\/p>\n
In all senior-citizen honesty, the biggest handicap to a full night’s sleep is going to the bathroom — multiple times. I try to defeat the Law of Bladders by cutting off all water at about 7 p.m. It hasn’t worked. I think sometimes my system stores up water for later, just to remind me I have no control over my own body.<\/p>\n
Since middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom are inevitable, I have developed my own system of memorizing the path to the room, so that I can walk the walk without really waking up. In theory, in my own home, that mostly works. The problem is when I travel, such as when I was in a hotel and refused to fully open my eyes, not wanting to wake up, and walked into the bathroom door, cutting my head. I looked pretty stupid at the event the next morning with a big Band-Aid, and wondered what housekeeping would think of the blood on the towel and pillowcase.<\/p>\n
When I do wake up hours before I want to start the day, I try to force myself not to think, not to start my brain working. Rather than stressing about undone work or unanswered questions of life, I try to replay old movies in my head. Sort of like watching TV — anything to fall back asleep. Besides, it’s cheaper than cable.<\/p>\n
I avoid tossing and turning — that just prompts another attack of vertigo. Yes, one more affliction of aging.<\/p>\n
I stay away from more pillows to prop up my head — it aggravates the arthritis in my neck.<\/p>\n
And I make it a point never to look at the clock. It would only stress me out more to know I had been asleep just two hours and still had an entire night of wakefulness in my future.<\/p>\n
Maybe I should counter sleeplessness by thinking of all the great deals I can get on senior meals. Nah, that would just make me hungry. Who can sleep on a grouchy stomach.<\/p>\n
• Larry Persily is a longtime Alaska journalist, with breaks for federal, state and municipal service in oil and gas, taxes and fiscal policy work. He is publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel weekly newspaper.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are many joys of aging, such as discounts at stores and services, using it as a convenient excuse for being forgetful, and smiling that few thieves would know how to drive my stick-shift VW Beetle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":100955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[568,106],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-100928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-opinion","tag-column","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100928"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=100928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}