This weekend I was going to blog all about the really fun Marx Brothers burlesque show I went to with a bunch of friends last Friday night. And since I'm on hiatus this week, I was going to spend all seven days writing. I have a story I've been working on for a month and this was the week I was going to finish it. I was going to write a bunch of emails I've been putting off. I was going to do laundry...

Well, all that went south when my sister called Saturday morning to tell me our Great Aunt Angie had fallen and broken her hip. Bad news for any person, really really bad news when said person is 100 years old. So Angie had to have surgery to put a pin in her hip to stabilize it--surgery, also not a good thing on a 100 year old woman--but thankfully, she came through it well. So well, in fact, that she went back to the nursing home yesterday. All the nurses and staff were happy to have her back. Apparently, Angie's quite a favorite there. She's a very small woman, so they think she's cute, and they're impressed that she's 100 years old and does almost everything on her own. Angie hates having people help her. Which is the thing that's really worrying me about this. I think she can recover from the broken hip. What could really kill her is being immobile and having to rely on others. She's always been a really upbeat person with a great sense of humor--aside from that whole maudlin Italian streak all us guineas got going on. But I'm worried this is going to send her into a depression that she can't get out of. Particularly because she's so hard of hearing that communicating is difficult for her.

And if I have to have the "Oh my god, she's 100? Well, don't you have good genes!" conversation one more time...

I swear this past 12 months or so has been my year to come face to face with the fact that we're all going to, like, you know, die. Why I didn't come to this conclusion when my grandmother passed away, I don't know. Maybe that was because I was in my 20's then, and mortality didn't really seem like something that could touch me. But in August, Angie turned 100 and I guess that ceased to be just a big, round number to me this week. And early in '07, my father, who turns 80 this year, was very ill and in the hospital for three months and it took that to make me realize how old and frail he was. What the hell happened? Where did all the time go?

All of which leads me to publicly announce my new life plan. Here it is:

I'm just not going to get old.

I'm just not.

And I'm going to win the lottery.