I don't have love for the creaky knees. Because they hurt going up/down stairs.

I had creaky knees since the mid-80s. Over time, they got stiffer and less flexible. Then in 2002, they popped. They don't work so good now, but look OK on x-rays. Opinions differ whether surgery would help. I have no advice.

That is all.

I'm loving white hair, especially in my beard. People seem to think it indicates wisdom, so I have fun giving them dangerous advice and laughing at them when they follow it.

I don't feel 48, I feel like I'm 30. Of course, that's today. Last Tuesday, I felt like I was 78. Yesterday though, my cardiologist said he is getting samples next week of a new medication for heart patients that may even out those exhaustion swings.

He and my psychiatrist have ruled out that my constant exhaustion is from the depression, so I have swung the onus of defeating it back into my cardiologist's court. The only thing standing between me and getting off disability and back to work is this blasted need to take a one- or two-hour nap every day in the early afternoon.

I have two patches of white whiskers in my beard, and when trimmed short, the black portion in the middle is shaped like a T which is weird because my first name is Tim.

Well as some of you may know. .I am 56 and still pretty, um, *spry* as they say. Dirty blonde hair is pretty totally grey now.

It's harder to keep weight off, I won't be running any marathons, and sugar and other cheap carbs wack my system. Maintenance is an ongoing issue. Most things still work, including the important stuff. But one also gets more cognizant of stuff that is either good or bad for you and it's easier to get motivated for the good stuff.

But I am also enjoying life, albeit at a slightly slower rate. So I would venture to offer this advice. . .live as if you will be 56 one day. . life is sorta long (if one is lucky).

Oh an wear sunscreen.

No, really.

The constant exhaustion could be a lot of things. I had the same problem, and it turns out it's my thyroid. (which also explains why, despite eating rather well and getting a lot of exercise, I'm not dropping weight like I should.)
It's an easy thing to test, never hurts to ask.

(as for me, my doc is hesitant to put someone under 30 on syntharoid since it's basically a lifetime thing, so she's "monitoring" it for the next year to see if it improves on its own. Since everyone in my mom's family over 45 or so is already on something for a wonky thyroid I'm pretty sure improvemnt isn't in yee olde cards.)
I have a creaky knee, too! Mine's because it's worked double hard to compensate for my bad ankle over the last decade. So I now, at 27, have the knee of a 40 year old. But, better than not having a foot, so I don't complain.

Age is such a strange thing. I see some of my former classmates on our reunion page, and so many of them look... well... adult. They look OLD. Like what I figured a 30 year old was like when I was a teenager. Me? I'm usually mistaken for being about 21 or 22, and get ID'd regularly. I can't say it's clean living, either. Knowing how straight arrow they are and were, and how much hard living I've packed into the last ten years. So no idea why I pass for a college kid and they look like stepford rolled up on them.

And yeah. Sunscreen. I may have the deathly pallor of a consumption victim, but I know I'll still be wrinkle free in a decade. And I've already danced with Lady Skin Cancer. I mean, I kicked her butt roundly, but it's not something I care to repeat.

Fuck aging. Fuck it. I'm 43 and one of my best friends won't turn 21 until next month while another of my closest friends is pushing 70. So I'm realizing that it's an artificial construct and thus, fuck it. I'll do what I want and what I always have. Besides, everyone usually thinks I'm like 32 or so. Then they find out how old my kids are and they freak out a little. It's fun to watch but it bothers me that then they feel they should treat me differently.

I do wish my stupid teeth were still 22 though - and that I was as skinny as I was at 23. But on the other hand, when I was that skinny I had no breasts; hell, I didn't get breasts until after my second child at age 28 and so, since they're younger than me, they don't sag! Ha! And I'm dying my hair purple again tonight. Manic panic ultraviolet, old friend, we're gonna get back together.

I was realizing the other day that I had no idea how to age; that the role models out there for women my age are really nothing I want to identify with. What very, very few there are, because older women become invisible. Besides, I missed that part of my life where I was supposed to be getting career oriented and making money, so I can't afford to get all coutured out and stuff, which is what's usually put up as the ideal. So instead I'll have to make up my own rules as I go along; fortunately, I've always been comfortable with that paradigm. Doing just the hell as I please seems to fit the bill.

Knowing how straight arrow they are and were, and how much hard living I've packed into the last ten years. So no idea why I pass for a college kid and they look like stepford rolled up on them.

That's why you look good and why I look good. It's a mental thing. If you think you have to be all perfect and straight arrow and uptight grownup adult responsible person, well, that's a lot of crazy stress that ages you. And before you know it you have a bob and a minivan with a fucking soccer ball on the back (/me has, in her life, had a minivan full of five kids, but never the soccer ball or the bob. Besides, I let the kids draw all over the inside and glue plastic dinosaurs to every surface.) and you're miserable.

At the risk of sounding like an infomercial--anyone with creaky painful knees should give chondroitin and/or glucosamine a shot. For the past twenty years I've had knees that creaked, and ached, and gave me the stabby-knife-in-kneecap pain any time I went up or down stairs or ran for the bus. I started on a chondroitin/glucosamine combo pill (600 mg of the former, 750 mg of the latter), and a few weeks later I was at the gym, realized that I was not having my usual serious knee-pain with the squats, jumped experimentally on a treadmill, and *ran a mile with no pain*, which I had not been able to do in -- well, twenty years.

I think I'm so giddy about it in part because everything else in my body is (at age 53) trending downward with seeming inexorability, and this is the *one* thing that seems to be swimming against the tide of decay.

When I hit 40 last summer, I actually felt like "TaDa!" I like myself so much more as I've aged. Yeah, I wish I was thinner, but since I'm feeling sexy as I am, and I don't want to work too hard on my weight, so be it. I like who I've become, and I guess it shows.
Like kellydamnit said, I was amazed at how some of my former classmates looked at my 20th reunion a few years ago. Some didn't look much different at all, some looked better than ever, but some looked like ..well, church ladies/sunday school teacher/ mousy types. And yes, most of them had always been the goody/goodys. Strange.

I've had creaky, poppy knees since I was a kid. It probably has to do with my lack of hip joints when I was born.

More on topic: what I like is that I've learned is that so many things just don't matter (such as what other people think of me). I'm much more laid back about almost everything. I'm also liking my silver hair.

It doesn't hurt, it just makes this insane, pleasing noise! But yeah, glucosamine, I know. *chases kids off lawn*

Fuck aging. Fuck it. I'm 43 and one of my best friends won't turn 21 until next month while another of my closest friends is pushing 70...
I can't make this comparison, not having any friends, but I feel the same kind of agelessness and have done so ever since I turned 30 (I'm now 45). I don't feel anything like that age and often find myself acting like a teenager one minute and bitching about teenagers the next. It doesn't matter, though because I don't give a fuck. I am not my age, I just am what I am.