At my age I do what Mark Twain did. I get my daily paper, look at the obituaries page and if I'm not there I carry on as usual.

It was to set a tone, ... Just because the average age on our team is 10 years older, just because they're 100 pounds bigger and a foot taller, we would not be the demure members of Congress. We would actually be aggressive.

It's been a challenging few years, being the age I am, with so much focus now on how I look. Almost to the point where I felt like, well, they don't know what to do with me. I am flawed. And I'm not 20. Not 30. But I'm certainly different from what most people feel someone in her 40s should be.

Both of them struggled initially, but they're tougher than they look and [tougher than] their age. They'll face obstacles, and they're being forced quicker into action but they're tough enough to handle the highs and the lows.

He lies there listening to it, absorbing this sense of his own quiet drone transmuted into something of certain substance, something large, magnificent and grand—no longer him, no, but something bursting from him, leaving his split carcass behind as a monument to its source, its host, its feeding ground.

It's a basic life choice I've been trying to make for five years. I hope I've finally made it.