The Surety and Truth of Aging

Our dogs are aging with us and for some reason our pets live a long, long time relatively pain free. Oh yes, I know the reason: we’ve spent a big chunk of our life’s savings on vet bills, procedures, and medications. This is all okay with me because I love my babies, but I have some advice for people who work hard to help their pets live long lives: GET PET HEALTH INSURANCE! Our ever more frequent visits sometimes make me paranoid that the vet thinks I have Munchausens by Proxy for Pets, but I don’t. However, I won’t know the whole truth unless I catch myself on a video camera (hidden in my small puppet theater) doing something like slipping the dogs unhealthy table scraps. Which in some perfectly reasonable way brings me to the subject of ghosts. I’ve seen a few over my lifetime, but at my age, I’m in a tricky position. When I reported them as a child, my parents could just remark on my “vivid imagination.” Now, I could get myself into trouble in a she’s-an-aging-crazy-person-let’s-commit-her kind of way. So I just keep infrequent sightings to myself, for the most part, because with ghosts, one can never be sure. And speaking of being sure and the truth, the other day I unfortunately and purely by accident caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror before stepping into the shower. “I look like hell!” I opined, and for the first time in my entire life, I was sure that my observation was the truth.