The older I get the more I enjoy my sleep and the less I like getting up. Bev Potter is in the same boat and tells us there are five stages of getting up….

Congratulations! You lived through another night! But this is no time to rest on your laurels. Now you have to get out of bed.

Remember when you used to spring out of bed like a young deer, or a young kangaroo, or a young anything, really?

Well, those days are over and now you need a plan of action unless you want to lay here in bed for the rest of your life, which will be mercifully short since there’s no food or water within reach of your bat-winged, liver-spotted arms.

There might be a dog hair covered granola bar under the bed, but that’s for a real emergency. Let’s begin.

(1) Denial Maybe it’s the weather. Is it raining? You’ll probably feel better tomorrow. Did you pull something? You’d be fine if you stretched regularly. You should really drink more water. The hard truth is that you are now basically origami. You don’t know how you got in this shape and you’re made out of paper.

(2) Anger Remember card tables and how you had to manually unfold the legs and lock them into place? And you always pinched your finger in one of the hinges and got a blood blister and then there was cussing, and possible physical violence directed towards the table? Getting up is like that.

(3) Bargaining You’re not supposed to use your hands for leverage. Studies have shown that people who put their hands on their thighs and then push to help them stand up die almost immediately. Even the coffee drinkers.

Is today a cane day? Well, it’s in the living room, of course, where ‘Yesterday You’ left it. ‘Yesterday You’ is very short-sighted and inconsiderate towards ‘Today You.’

Where are your slippers? They are waaaaaayyyyyy over there. The hardwood floor is going to play your naked arthritic toes like a xylophone.

You never knew you could get arthritis in your toes. What’s next, your earlobes? Probably.

If you’re feeling masochistic, watch one of those videos about how you should be able to get up off the floor without using your hands. Those are always good for a laugh.

(4) – Depression You used to just stand up. You just stood up like a normal person and you didn’t think twice about it. Now you need to kind of dive into the floor. Put your hands on your thighs and lean forward so far, you’re definitely going to fall on your face one day and push.

(5) – Acceptance See? You’re standing up! Sort of. Mostly. You’re almost fully erect, which is the best you can hope for.

You’re supposed to hold your head up and look straight ahead when you walk, but that’s insanity. How do you know what trip hazards there might be, like a stick or a large bug or a piece of grass, if you’re not looking at your feet?

Looking like a walking question mark is fine. This is fine.

And there you have it! An actionable plan to help you face another day that you don’t really want to face, but it’s better than the alternative, I guess. replace church welfare with state welfare, may strike the elites as progress, but they hit ordinary residents as a death sentence.

—CC—