August | 2009 | Claire Gillian

I’m going to be 50 late next year (gotta include the “late” part). I’m getting old. My doctor is younger than me and he asks me every time if I’ve hit menopause yet. Check my damn file you fool! Stupid HMO. He also advises me of all the things I should be doing now that I’m “at that age”. At that age? What the hell? It’s one thing for me to call myself old. It’s a completely different thing for someone else to do so. Where is the boundary between young and old? Is there such a thing?

This AM I was doing a Cathe step workout, one of her older ones. I noticed that she wasn’t as stringy looking as she is now (and I don’t mean that in a nasty way–she’s very cut and muscular), her face was fuller, her eyes much bigger and she used an 8″ step. An 8″ step! I graduated from a 4″ step to a 6″ step about 6 or 7 years ago. Here lately I’ve begun worrying about tripping and breaking an ankle or a hip. I’ve also been wondering when age will force me to drop back down to 4″. Cathe now uses a 6″ step in her routines after some pretty serious knee surgery. She’s about 43 or so. Maybe she shouldn’t have been using an 8″ step all those years ago. Maybe I shouldn’t be using a 6″ step.

All these internal ponderings about step heights and age related changes had me thinking of my own eventual decline. How much longer until I wistfully gaze at my workout dvd collection and go, “too hard, too hard, too hard, too hard…” as I move from title to title? If I sell them, it’s like turning a corner and knowing I can never go back. I used to push myself to increase my fitness but there comes a point where no matter how hard you push yourself, the body not only refuses to go any faster but it will begin to slow. I wonder if Jack LaLane watches old videos of himself and says “ah if only I could still swim and pull a boat”. The dude’s like 90 something.

I also see these actors and actresses who were drop dead gorgeous in their day, my day, and now they are playing mothers, fathers and grandparents. Even Heather Locklear is getting puppet lines on her face. Pamela Anderson was looking a tad saggy too. Madonna is starting to scare me. Jack Coleman who was the hunky gay son on Dynasty plays father to Claire Bennett on Heroes. Claire is off to college. Child stars like Brook Shields (who looks wonderful by the way) are showing up on mature women’s magazine covers. Cheryl Ladd of Charlie’s Angels was in a print ad for bladder control or something like that. Another problem is the hunky actors of today are still quite appealing to my nearly 50 yr old married eyes, despite being young enough to be my son. I am now Mrs. Robinson. Yee-gads.

Getting old sucks. It really is like the lines from the Anna Nalick song Breathe,

But you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable,
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now
Sing it if you understand.

Girl, I’m singing.

My current WIP, novel #2 is a thriller called The PURE (which stands for previously undetected recruiting error).

Here’s a 1st draft of an info-dump from it that I’m rather fond of. It may not make the cut but I’m going to save it here for posterity because me likey…

Finding the photocopy room posed a new navigational challenge. I had no idea where the big mucky mucks had their secretaries do their copying. After nearly completing my second circuit, I finally located the copy room next to the freight elevator. The close proximity of the two areas facilitated the endless cycle of paper in and paper out.

ABC wasn’t the least bit green or tree friendly. We created gluttonous mountains of discarded and then shredded paper each week. Our dirty little secret sat like troll droppings near the freight elevators on each floor, all destined for the city dump. I guess ABC had never heard of recycling.

I slipped the stack of pages into the feeder section of the copy machine and punched in the Aphrodite job number because we billed our clients for anything and everything possible. White collar crime clues were no exception.

And a second one, also a 1st draft and also most likely destined for cyberheaven:

Bob’s computer glowed in front of me. Company policy required that desktops on the network remain on 24/7 for software “pushes” or program updates that were downloaded automatically in the wee hours. Those of us with laptops didn’t have that luxury. We had to wait out the deferred downloads and updates each time we fired up our laptops and logged into ABC’s network.

Everyone’s login name was their first initial and their last name. Passwords were eight alphanumeric characters of our choice and had to be changed every 30 days. Most people picked something with six easy to remember letters like their names and then tacked on 01 then 02, etc to satisfy the numeric requirement. This methodology also allowed them to keep virtually the same password in rotation for the next 99 months before they had to start over again with six new alpha characters. Our profession taught the importance of having strong internal controls, such as unpredictable and unbreakable passwords, yet we ourselves didn’t hesitate to thumb our noses at such concepts.

I hunted around Bob’s desk for evidence that he too was guilty of the same hubris but at first blush found nothing so easy as a post it note on the monitor.

I accidentally moved the mouse and cleared the screen saver, which brought up the network login screen. It taunted me but not knowing his password or having any clue to it, I made myself ignore it for the time being and continued to flip through his paper files. Electronic files were no safer than paper ones and possibly even less so. The average partner was at least 40 and not IT savvy but physical control under lock and key they understood.