old dog

After a self-indulgent Sunday spent sunbathing in the garden, a brief curse with connected dash to wash work clothes, and a brutal 20 minute workout in the sunshine, I decided to take Jessie for a short walk because the weekend had been so nice I didn't really want it to end.
We were walking home and we met another dog walker and she looked all smitten with Jessie (not an unfamiliar reaction and one Jessie takes in her little stride). She turned to me and, more than a touch unexpectedly, asked "Is she old?". Jessie is by no means an old dog (2) and looks like a teddy bear/puppy. In the dog world, she's a total hottie. So I was a bit taken aback, replying that she'd had a really long walk earlier that day (which she did, with the infamous molly). The woman, who hadn't taken her foot out from the last time she put it in it, carried on "Ahhh. She looks knackered!"

Apart from the irrational shock on Jessie's behalf (I don't think she was too concerned about looking knackered - she was otherwise occupied trying to stop the woman's little scruffy dog from sniffy her butt), it got me thinking. How many times have I been into work having done a brutal workout the day before and being thoroughly knackered and the people have work have thought how old I look? More often than Jessie gets it, I'd bet. This is not the first time, at 26, I have felt really old. The worst bit is largely I see myself as early twenties, fresh-faced, young and quite attractive (grudgingly admitted on 'good' days) and then something happens that makes that carefully-constructed little disillusion come crashing down. It makes me panic that my entire view of where I am in life is completely warped and that in reality I should be dying to move into a place with my boyfriend (instead of desperately dreaming of moving in with my friend) and getting ready to have kids (the other week at my older sister's house seeing the little tooth brushes of my two adorable nieces I almost had a full-on panic attack). I don't think it's that I am immature (quite the opposite; I once overheard my mum calling me Saffy from the TV show AbFab) but that I am having a mid-twenties crisis.

Poor old dog.