With age comes...

... wisdom? knee pain? On the eve of my birthday I'm thinking about what the passage of years has meant to me and what that means to my minute place in the world.

Thus, I present the top 10 things that getting older means to me:

10 - My idea of fun is much less expensive than it once was
9 - The world still doesn't work the way I think it should. But by now I know it isn't going to. I'm over it. Mostly.
8 - Stuff that used to be important isn't any more. (In fact, it never was...)
7 - A dog is a fine solution to the empty nest syndrome.
6 - It's a lot more fun to talk with my kids as interesting, resourceful adults -- however infrequently, given their own busy lives -- than it was to help them with homework. I like this phase better.
5 - I no longer have time to waste on things I think somebody thinks I should do, but I don't want to do.
4 - It's my turn to have walked 20 miles in the snow in my bare feet.
3 - I should never have chuckled at my father reading with a magnifying glass. What goes 'round, comes 'round. Something to remember now when I'm impatient in the grocery line behind the woman in a walker.
2 - I really do have enough. Enjoy it, let the rest go.
1 - You really do catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But if you don't hang with flies you don't need either one.