Too old?

I believe I am now officially "old." Although in this particular sense, I've always been so.

Last week my office neighbor sent out an email inviting those who he thought would be interested, to a gig his band had coming up this weekend. Initially I was quite excited about the prospect of going out to hear live music, until I found out they weren't going on until 10:30 PM. I never started my evenings when I was considerably younger at that hour, so what made me think that at 51 that might have changed? 

Perhaps delusion, wishful thinking, or temporary insanity was the cause. Really, I never stayed up past 10 PM if I could help it, at least until I was 25 and my first child was born. She was not the happiest of infants, so sitting up late into the night became the norm, which is when I discovered TV after 10, the 11 O'clock News, David Letterman and Saturday Night Live.

Don't get me wrong, there were times when I was out late, the difference was that I wasn't leaving the house at that time. At my age, I'm ready to be home by the time the White Throated Sparrow on my bird clock tweets and twitters, "It's ten o'clock. Shouldn't you be in bed by now??"

In reality I'm a wanna be night person who can't be, because she has a day job. Over the past two months I've had a self imposed bed time of 10 PM because I get up at 6 AM. That should equal 8 hours of sleep, which rarely happens. If I aim to get to bed by 10 I'm usually in bed by 10:30, and hopefully asleep by 11. I would have to start getting psyched for bed at 9:00 if I wanted to truly be asleep by 10:00. When I don't get enough sleep I both look, and feel like hell. It's one of the primary reasons I'm contemplating getting DVR from my cable company. The only TV shows I'm remotely interested in watching, are on after 10 PM. DVR would solve what I consider to be my late night TV viewing dilemma.

So, here it is, now 8:35 and I'm justifying in writing, why I'm not going out at 10 to see Dominick's band play. It probably would have been a good idea to have planned just a little bit better. I think that perhaps if I had gone to a movie and then to the bar, that would possibly have worked. Right now I'm sitting very comfortably in my rocking chair, barefoot and in my sweats, in the quiet (well, this is Jackson Heights and on a Saturday night it's never exactly quiet) with a cup of decaff. Over the course of today I traveled to Downtown Brooklyn, had my hair cut, walked around, came home, went out to the grocery store and shopped, came home, went out to run some other errands, came home, heated leftovers for dinner, and now I think I'm done for the day. I did not get in a car to do any of those activities, all of which required walking and carrying stuff. 

I'm tired......and when it comes to leaving the house at 10 PM to socialize, I'm as old as I've always been.
I do hope that Dominick will forgive me.