I have said this because I believed it to be true—there’s always a third alternative. Even when there are two paths: go to the left, to the right, or stand still. Stand and fight, run away, or try to negotiate a compromise. Choose yes, choose no, or make no choice. But then this one hit me: aging. You age or you don’t. You grow old or you die. That’s it. Two choices. Getting younger isn’t an option. Time moves forward or it stops–for all living beings, So, what is my advice in light of this hard, cold, either/or reality? Find something(s) you love to do and do it as much as you can as well as you can as often as you can for as long as you can. Okay, so don’t hurt anyone else in the process, for sure. That goes without saying, I hope. But still. Just don’t wait for the optimal time, or for the right person to approve, or to have more money. While you’re waiting, you’ll get older anyway. I once heard someone say, “I’m not a human doing; I’m a human being.”  Well, guess what? You better be both. Be a good person, sure, but do stuff, too. Work. Learn things, take risks, go places, talk to strangers, keep moving. Take the stairs while others get on the elevator. Push yourself. Keep on—until you can’t. Because that day will come, and think of all the cool memories you’ll have.

Our air conditioner blew up. Well, the blower motor did, and the unit is fourteen years old, so the decision has been made to replace it. Can I just say, it feels like a betrayal to me. The compressor is fine. Two weeks ago, a blanket covered me as I watched TV, and I wore socks to bed. That’s how well the AC worked. Now it’s to be trashed for a brand-new machine. The blower motor is expensive, so the costs were weighed. “It could go out tomorrow,” said the salesman, “and you would’ve spent good money to do a patch-up job.”

Yeah, I get it. I didn’t say it out loud, but I was thinking, It could chug away for another five years, too, couldn’t it?

It’s not quite summer here in north-central Florida, but we live in a swampy area, so the humidity is high all the time. It’s good for your skin and probably the green growing things, but not much else. My floors are sticky, as am I, and we’re going to have to wait for another week to ten days to be hooked back up to refrigerated air. It’s giving me time to think.

I was raised like this—fans in the windows, taking cool baths in the middle of the night. But back then I didn’t know any different, and now I do. How spoiled I’ve become to creature comforts. Last night my son-in-law hooked up one of those stand up units and vented it out the window, and sleep was possible because the bedroom was cool. Today it’s supposed to rain and get a little cooler, so we’ll make it, just maybe with a little less tolerance for frustration—a term I learned as a therapist.

I’m using the time to finish up (hah) my cozy mystery story. Never tried one of those before, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. That’s the important thing, having a little fun every day, because I can’t get that betrayal out of my mind. That perfectly good compressor is sitting there mad that it has to get thrown on the trash heap because the blower motor couldn’t behave.

Maybe I’m uncomfortable about it because when you get to this age, throwing things away because parts of them don’t work feels wrong. Parts of me don’t work so well either, but I could go on for years. Thankfully, I’ve had a few patch-up jobs myself—some quite recently. I lost a burst appendix that betrayed me, and then a diseased gall bladder. Never was sure what that was for anyway. But I’m still vertical—and still writing.

I know I’ll be grateful for that new air conditioner, but I still think someday we need to re-think this throwaway mentality.