The Fruit of the Murphy Loins are just a touch older than Da Goddess’s, so I have to respond to her observation:

It doesn’t matter if I just saw her the day before or two weeks ago or whenever, the simple fact is, she’s growing up so fast. In just over a month she’ll be 15. Little Dude is going to be 11 about a week from now. Both of them are constant reminders that I’m getting older.

I hate to break it to you, but at some point you stop getting older, and you start getting old. And as much as it pains me to say, I think I’m already there. I carry a light and magnifying glass with me so that I can read the menu in a restaurant. The hearing isn’t what it once was. I look back at the days of my youth and am convinced that things were better back then. When smaller children (i.e. under the age of 25) are having fun in the neighborhood I feel an urge to go out in nothing but my underwear and yell at them from my front porch and afterwards mutter about the kids of today under my breath. OK, maybe not the last part, but I have no doubt that within a decade, AKA a blink of an eye, it will be true. And as Ecclesiastes would have it, there is a season to be a crotchity old fart, so I’m thinking that it isn’t all bad.