Feeling the creaks

For those of you not familiar with the book "Uncle Elephant", by Arnold Lobel, you should pick up a copy. The book has the sweetest stories about a boy elephant who lives with his uncle for a while. The stories provide reminders to take time to enjoy the simple things in life and to look at the world through a child's perspective. It's a classic.

One of the stories is called, "Uncle Elephant Feels the Creaks", about getting older, which brings me to the whole point of this post. I had a whole week of feeling the creaks.

Last weekend I went to SF to walk with my good friend Karen. We walked all over SF that morning, the same morning as the Bay to Breakers run. Though we didn't walk along the route, we saw signs of the Bay to Breakers everywhere. Young people were drinking alcohol and carousing about at 8:30 in the morning. We saw many groups of toga-toting party animals making their way to the route.

Karen and I were roommates in college and reminisced about the old days. Then we walked by my old apartment on Nob Hill. This was my first apartment after college. It's an amazing 3.5 bedroom apartment with 2 fireplaces and a washer/dryer in the unit. I rented it out with three friends from Stanford at the obscenely low rent of $1400 (my share was $425 for my own room). Now you can't even get a one-bedroom for $1400. We asked someone to take a photo of us in front of the apartment building.

Compare the above photo with the one below, Karen and I are in both. Not hard to guess which one is me is it? The one below was taken in 1992. For me 20 pounds ago, for the group, eight kids later. What a difference 15 years makes!Later in the week, we celebrated my birthday. Kevin and I met up with friends at Le Cheval for a birthday dinner. It was nice to see my friends in one place, but gosh, I felt old.Lastly, we celebrated with my family on Saturday night. It was a nice way to top off the birthday festivities.

Having a kid is another reminder of how old I really am. I can't chase him around on my hands and knees on the hardwood floor and it's hard to keep up with him on the playground. Then the other day Lucas said to me, "Mommy I'm pretty good at soccer. I think I was probably better than you were even before you got old." Ouch! Way to pour salt on the wound.