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This morning I started to get ready to go to the gym and I threw out my back putting on my pants. Yes, I managed to hurt myself without doing anything more strenuous than lifting a leg and I have decided that getting old sucks.
Once upon a time, I hiked 7 miles up into the White Mountains with a full weekend worth of gear on my back without injury. Now I succumb to injury just trying to get dressed in the morning.
Table of Contents
Life Lessons from Middle Age
Oh how far I have fallen since my college days. I may not be quite as agile as I once was but I think my 40’s have brought me a whole lot more wisdom than I had when I was in my 20’s.
I could care less about designing the best outfit of the day. Pajamas are totally acceptable to wear to the grocery store. Want to know what else I learned last year? Here are just a few life lessons I have finally figured out.
Perfection only exists on the Internet
I am honestly so glad that the Internet didn’t exist when my kids were babies. Well, I’m sure it was THERE, I just didn’t have access to it. I had to go with my instincts when it came to raising my kids instead of reading on Facebook all the ways I was completely screwing up my children.
Perfect parents on Facebook show off their perfectly decorated nursery and their perfect family photos. You never see the post about how that perfect mom’s toddler scribbled all over the walls with crayons. You never see the photos of the kids screaming or the one where the baby puked all over Santa.
Perfect Pinterest dinners, perfect marriages and perfect lives are splashed all over the Internet. Then you find out that your neighbors are divorcing because someone cheated, your old college buddy is going to jail for embezzlement and that perfect kid your friend is raising just got caught with pot in the school bathroom.
People aren’t perfect and trying to achieve perfection is utterly exhausting.
No, you really can’t have it all
I am tired of people trying to push the idea that you can have it all, if you just work hard enough for it. You cannot run your own business, take good care of yourself mentally and physically, and give your all to your family at the same time. You can’t.
And to people that say they CAN, I call bullshit and send you back to the point about perfection up above. Want to climb the corporate ladder and be the top in your field, well, you can rest assured you are going to miss a few important activities in your kid’s lives in order to do it.
Think you can work full time, go to the gym, sew your kid’s Halloween costume, and have a healthy dinner on the table for your family? You are delusional. Pick a few things that are really important to you and forget about having it all.
Besides, store bought Halloween costumes will get your kid just as much candy as one that was made from the sweat of your own brow. Getting old sucks but I have finally learned how to prioritize and hand sewed Halloween costumes are not high on my to do list. I am not Martha Stewart and I’m okay with that.
Sheer stupidity will be the downfall of humanity
I have come to realize that the human population is becoming more and more ignorant. There is a label on my cooler that warns ‘Do not place babies in this cooler’. Who the hell puts babies in coolers?
It’s like the warning on coffee that contents is hot. Or the warning on those detergent pods that says ‘do not eat’. How stupid have we become that we need reminders to not eat laundry detergent?
People spend more time worrying about who might be peeing in the stall next to them at Target than they do about the chemicals that are sprayed all over the food they feed their kids.
They fight gay marriage with a passion that is disturbing but could care less about companies who are polluting the air they breathe. Which one of these effects you more? The marriage of two happy people or breathing in carcinogens. Stupidity. Plain and simple.
Getting old sucks in some ways. I spend way more time plucking grey hair than I used to and I pee when I sneeze but I have definitely gotten smarter with age.
Of course, since I threw out my back putting on those pants I have plenty of time to lie around and scroll through those perfect looking DIY projects on Pinterest.

I wear many hats in this thing called life. I am a science geek, an introvert, a busy mother of teens and slightly neurotic about dirty dishes. I used to have a really important sounding job in cancer research when I decided to give it all up to be a stay at home mom. I played with Playdough, colored pictures of Barbies and freaked out when the baby ate dog food. Then the second kid came along and I started to think dog food might have nutritional value. What is Fractionated Living? It is meā¦divided by work, life, kids, marriage, and hobbies and trying to come up with the answer to life.
It definitely does!