By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice.

I’m not a summer person, and when my time comes to buckle up and speed away from this crazy planet on whatever form of transportation the afterlife provides, I will depart having never liked the hot season. I tell myself it’s my Viking blood, although I can’t say I have any. Ancestry holds no interest for me whatsoever—and I’m adopted, so whose ancestors would I research anyway?

I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice. For me it’s when we’re closest to the sun and farthest from a parka. When June arrives in earnest I know the humidity can’t be far behind, and with it the heat that amplifies its discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered what meteorologists mean when they offer the ‘feels like’ temperature, it’s the moisture, the dew point, that awful stickiness only a powerful air conditioner can neutralize, and only when you stay inside. Walk out the door on a hot, humid summer day, and that refreshing coolness is forgotten in an instant. Ovens are dryer, and at least you can make dinner with them. Speaking of ovens … don’t. When summer is blazing, my rule at  home is no cooking that requires heat of any kind. It’s possibly the best thing about those record-setting hot temperature days.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.

What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.

I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.