I don’t know how to say this without sounding old, because in fact I am old:

I wish there weren’t different rules for all the many, many passwords I have, and at the same time I wish it wasn’t so easy to log on in the first place. It’s very easy: I just raise my phone to my face and huzzah! I am logged in. Or else I have to get my provider to text a message to my phone number, which provides me with a temporary number that is automatically filled in by my computer. It’s very hard: I must create something so meaningless in the way of a password that no one could ever guess it by chance, including me, but it’s easy to reset by getting it to send a message to my phone, which I can therefore never lose, except I lose things.

I had to chair a meeting this morning, and as I was walking to the place where the meeting was held (the buses are all detoured right now in an illogical manner, and I gave up my car a while back), I realized I forgotten to put my hearing aids in. I had to chair the meeting with my hand cupped to my ear half the time. And my reading glasses on top of my head because I forgot they were there.

A little snow and ice on the streets, and suddenly I am a tottering old person with bad balance and a touch of vertigo who could be permanently disabled if I slip. A friend who also has vertigo and balance issues saw that I was going to the meeting today and said to herself, “If she can go, I can go,” which is nice except for the fact that it reminds me that I am ten years older than she is.

I don’t know how to say this without sounding old, because in fact I am old: I have been forgetful, impatient, distracted, and confused all my life, so my current state of mind is nothing new, but I keep having to remind myself that it’s not one of the many forms of senile dementia.

Also, I carefully wrote down my favorite recipes in a leather-bound journal. I just had it out the other day to look up my favorite recipe for tofu bolognese, and now I can’t find the damn journal anywhere. It also had my most important passwords written in it just in case, so I have spent much of the afternoon changing my passwords. This means I am getting all kinds of texts and emails from automated systems verifying that I am who I say I am, and I’m tired of it. Especially since I have probably changed most of those passwords anyway since I wrote them down, because I never actually looked in the journal anyway, and especially since I’m going to discover the journal in the bottom of a stack of books or in a tote bag in my closet any moment now.*

I have heat, though. And a cat. He is currently trying to convince me to feed him six minutes early. I’m not that old, Louie; you can’t fool me.

*It was in the bookshelf where I put it, but it was concealed by the front facing of the bookshelf. Well, that’s a thing.