I still believe in miracles

Today I told The Husband that he has 16 days to find me a nice fat diamond for my Birthday. He said that the only diamond he could currently afford was the 3 carat variety used on the end of a glass cutter, if I wanted anything bigger I would need to use said glass cutter to secure it myself.

It’s not that I want a diamond. I’m just trying to brighten up the prospect of my rapidly approaching 28th Birthday.

Aging never really concerned me until I noticed the crow’s feet around my eyes, and how sneakily unforgiving my body is for every year after 25. Hangovers last entire days now, chocolate digestives turn to cellulite instead of energy. I’m no fool, I’ve seen the face of old age and it is wrinkled and demented. I’m on a slippery slope to incontinence.

Soon I’ll be like Frau, the crazy 91 year old German I looked after last February. Frau, had so lost her battle with gravity, that she had actually fallen through her own bottom in the form of an anal prolapse. Until this time I had believed this to be an idle threat of my Father’s, ‘If you don’t eat enough you’ll fall through your own backside’ was up there with, ‘Television gives you square eyes.’

When Frau opened her door I was met by a wizened question mark of a woman, who immediately handed me a portable doorbell receiver. This, I was firmly instructed, was to be carried with me at all times! When Frau needed me she would push her little button and my receiver would emit a frightening and frenzied DING-DONG, DING-DONG, DING-DONG.

About 2 days into my stint with Frau she summoned me to the bathroom with frantic DING-DONGING. I approached with caution, as she did not generally require bathroom assistance.

Frau: Zank Goodness you are here. It’s my prolapse.
Me: Ah, yes what about your prolapse?
Frau: It is…troubling me, I need you to check if it iz out.
Me: [Horrified! But maintaining the face of professional dignity at all times] How exactly do I do that?
Frau: [Standing up and hitching skirt above head] I vill bend over, tell me if it is out.

*Before I could reply the old had girl turned towards the wall touching her toes with remarkable flexibility. The sight that greeted me was something out of an alien horror movie. While my initial reaction was to cross myself and then rush wretching towards the handbasin, I composed myself (ever the professional GAPE *Geriatric Au Pair Extraordinaire):

Me: Ah, yes I don’t know much about prolapses, but in my limited experience, I would say that it is definitely out.
Frau: Ah, yes, vell goet. I will put it back in.

[The details of how this is done are really not necessary. Needless to say I blacked out again with a little voluntary amnesia].

And this is my problem I’ve a little too intimate a knowledge of old age to grow old gracefully. A friend I have shared this shocking tale with shares my sentiment, he has decided once he reaches 70 to end it all in a cocaine fuelled orgy with Japenese twins. Sounds to me like a plan, although perhaps there’s hope for me yet as I still seem to have a particularly juvenile sense of humour. My Husband was reading his horoscope which declared “Golden ideas will originate from Uranus…being in your sign,” of course I didn’t hear a word after Uranus as I was giggling so much.

After all I still believe in miracles.