I’ve always been young.  I’ve never known any different. What’s more, I’ve always been the youngest of my friends.  I got married young, pregnant young, pregnant again young… and everyone would tell me when they saw my ring or my protruding belly, “you’re so young.”  They’d tell me they wished they were young again.

And I vocally admitted that I didn’t mind aging.  I sort of took to it, actually, because it seemed no matter what I was still young.  Birthday after birthday passed, and I didn’t “age” age.  I just had to write a new number on forms and stuff.

But something’s flipped inside of me.  Something’s gone haywire with my logic.  Part of it has declared “MUTINY” on the rest of it and there’s this bloody battle raging in my head.  I know I’m young.  The nice part of my brain tells me that (it’s trying to keep up moral, all that).  But part of me FEELS old.   I mean… physically.  My lower back hurts all the time.  My knees hurt.  I’m gradually going blind(er).  And I move like an older person.  I don’t run.  I don’t sprint.  I’m not agile and I can’t roll around with my kids like young people do.

As I watched a few of the youth from our church scale sand dunes like it was nothing, I felt that my body is older than my age.  So I went walking today.  Is my back screaming?  Well, yeah.  But I’ll get it a massage later and it’ll get over it.  I’ve got to win back my health -my youth…

Most importantly, I need to help the Good Guys in my head win.  Don’t feed me any line like “age has nothing to do with birthdays or years or what-have-yous.”  I know that bit.  Where I’ve got my hang-up is that my body thinks it’s much older than 25.

Which, let’s face it, is still young.

I should enjoying it and literally running with it.  I should be feeling the energy of youth tearing through my body, but all that’s tearing through my body now is the pointed pang of fatigue.  It’s wrong!  It’s wrong!  How did I let this happen?!

Today I’ll eat better than I did yesterday.  How’s that?  And every day I’ll fight a little harder and gain a little more ground.  It’s bound to turn out all right in the end if I work hard enough.

And here’s a taste of youth -directly from the sand dunes to you:

When I was growing up, my family had satellite television.  I used to love the rare moments when I was home alone and could watch whatever I wanted, and that was most always Turner Classic Movies.  I would get giddy watching the opening sequences of old movies, and I’d stay riveted to the screen until the movies would end.  I’m rather an addict to stories.  It’s bordering on obsessive and sad.

For example, while shopping at a thrift store with my little sister last week, I pulled a very old jacket from the rack and said, “Don’t you ever wonder how many of these clothes come from the closets of people who have died?”

“NO!” She said and laughed.  And that surprised me.  I thought everyone thought of those kinds of things.  I used to spend a lot of time wondering about the day I would eventually die.  My train of thought was something like, ‘Every year I pass the day I’m going to die and I don’t even know it.  Someday I’m going to have a funeral announcement and the date of my death will be written on the front right under my picture.  I’ve passed that date over and over… written it on checks.  But I have no idea what it is…’

And then I happened to read a poem by W.S. Merwin and felt better.  I’m not the only one who thinks about these kinds of things.  Is that a good thing?  I don’t know, but it makes me feel better anyway.

I force myself to put down celebrity gossip magazines (because!  they’re nonsense!) only to find myself coming home to google things like “Gary Cooper affair with Grace Kelly.”  Have you ever seen a picture of Gary Cooper?

Grace Kelly has all the luck.
Not that I’d care to have an affair with him OR be his cheated-on wife, for that matter.
But I sure do like to look at him.

I couldn’t care less for Angelina Jolie, honestly.  But I care a great deal for Grace Kelly.  What’s the difference between the two?  Um, one has big lips and the other married a Prince who refused to let her act anymore on account of her having affairs with nearly every leading man she acted with.  Smart Prince.

I can read about these things for hours, really.  I can read about people -about their lives and problems and situations… forever!  I love it!  I have to pry myself out of books and away from movies because I just get to wrapped up in the stories.  I’m constantly regaling my husband with stories of all kinds, and he bears it well.  He’s a regular soldier.

He is!  I mean, I’ve told you all this before.  I’ve told you about how I love stories.  I’ve told you about how I love my husband.  This is all old cud that’s been chewed before.  Isn’t it?  Not so today, chum! Not so! …on account of my husband’s confession not five days ago that he’s … “sick of old movies.”

After he told me that, I fell out of his arms and onto the floor (granted, we were only lying side by side on the couch, but still.  The effect sounds dramatic).

“What?!” I cried, and pretended to dig the imaginary dagger deeper into my heart. He laughed at me, but he usually does. Mostly because I’m prone to irrationalities.
He had no defense, and I pretended not to know him for an hour. At least.

Yesterday, I was at my sewing machine between the hours of 2 pm and 8 pm. I set up Lappy and streamed movies while I stitched and ironed. It’s jolly fun for me, you know… combining movie watching with productivity. It’s downright gratifying. Whilst streaming, I came upon a movie that FIXES everything. Absolutely everything.
It was a book first though. We’ve got to give credit there.
It’s called “Piccadilly Jim.” The latest movie version was made in 2006, and that’s the version I watched last night. It’s available on Netflix instant streaming.

(photo credit availableimages.com)

It’s set in the 1930’s but this movie version has modernized it, making it just the right FIX for my marriage. The humor is just right. The characters are strong. The music is fantastic (singing “Tainted Love” like it was written in 1924? Yes please!).
Here’s a peak at possibly the worst scene in the movie, but it gives you a taste of the song:

Tonight, my husband and I can watch something (besides Bones) that we both agree on. We don’t fight over movies, mind you. But it’s always nice to watch something we can both love.
One of our friends posted this quote on facebook this morning:
The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. ~ Jessica Hische
Incidentally, her name is also Alicia. Voonderful.
After reading that quote, I made a solemn vow to take a class on writing screenplays. If I can’t find one that suits my budget, then google will have to do. And Google has never failed me.

See? Gary Cooper at my fingertips.

Years ago, I gave a special birthday card to my best friend.  I couldn’t afford to go out and buy a birthday card, not to mention the fact that I wasn’t near old enough to drive.  I wanted to make it special anyway.  REALLY special.  I knew it would never be as good as store bought, so I tried thinking of ways to make up for it.  In the end, I decided the best thing to do would be to write a poem.  An Alicia Original.

It was a humdinger.  I don’t remember what it said, but I remember her pulling it out years afterward and we both got a huge laugh out of it.  It was scrawled out in 8 year-old handwriting and went so far as to rhyme words like “to” and “you.”

Fancy.

Today marks that time of year again.  Her birthday, I mean.  I don’t have a great card to send her (she never fails to find the funniest cards for me.  I still have them).  And as I mulled over what to give her, I decided to renew my gift of writing.  Now don’t get excited, I’m not going to write a poem.

The thing is: beginning with that first hen-scratch poem, Tia has always been there to read whatever I had to write.  In sixth grade, I wrote my first story about a pioneer girl named Alice who, in a fit of anxiety over the prospect of crossing the plains, knit 7 sweaters in one night.  Tia read it.  I enjoyed writing the story so much that I immediately set to writing another one set in the Civil-War era about a girl named Emma who was madly in love with a soldier named Matt.  I never finished it.  The story went along very well up until the scenes where they had to kiss and stuff.  The story came to an abrupt halt.  Turns out I didn’t know a thing about love, let alone how to write about kissing.  But Tia read it anyway.

Tia reads my blog, you know.  She gets my inside jokes and movie quotes.  She contributed her irresistible bread stick recipe to my cooking blog.  And she even went the extra mile and read my stories blog where I would take time now and then to write stories both short and long.  Mostly long.

Anyway.

When I switched my blog over to wordpress, a story I’d been writing sort of got lost in the mix.  Tia, champion that she is, had been reading it.  I kept meaning to import the story, but I never did.  I resolved this week to FINALLY do it.  And so -this morning -I did.

I feel like an 8 year old handing my best friend a scrawly poem all over again.  It isn’t much.  It isn’t store bought.  But it’s the thought that counts, right?  Starting today, Delia’s Story continues.  Today’s entry isn’t all that great on account of my taking most of the morning to import the rest of the story.

Honestly, I had NO idea I write so much.  Someone whack me before it gets worse.

(Delia’s story is a different kind of story.  I’m writing it in blog form, if that makes any sense.  “Delia” has taken over my stories blog, so to speak.  It’s loads of fun to write a story like this.  The entire imported part of the story is posted in one LONG post that I didn’t bother to separate, but it isn’t hard to figure out.  First you have to read the LONG post, then today’s post if you’re interested in reading.  I’ll be adding to it as the days go by, so if you’re looking for something more to read with all that spare time you have [that was a little joke], click on over to Delia’s Story).

Happy Birthday, Tia.  I’m wearing your polyester brown pants RIGHT NOW.  And next time you come to town, I motion that you, me, Steve, Lindsay, Jay, and who ever else wants come over to watch Dennis the Menace. We can watch it at my house so long as you don’t touch my DVD player “because you don’t know which button to push.”
(“I bet I do… It’s THIS ONE!”)
**Stupid facebook won’t let me steal any of her pictures, but trust me when I say this: she’s rearry pretty and rearry funny and totes smart. Totes.**