Post Birthday Musing

I'm 53 now.

When a girl is a girl, she does girlish things, but when she's a woman she puts away the girl stuff. Or whatever that saying says. I've been contemplating the last two days, what it is that I have to put aside as I get older. And because every pancake has two sides, I have also been thinking about what, if anything, I gain.

First of all, I'll never ever go to sleep again without one of these:


After your mother in law rear ends you on a family vacation (don't even get me going on that story) and after you yourself drive your new family van into a light post, and after 15 years have passed, you need a pillow made out of this stuff to take care of the residual neck pain. You pack it in your suitcase whenever you go anywhere, you sleep on it ever single night for the rest of your life, and you testify to all of your friends over and over of it's benefits until they all buy one too. And when you go on your sewing weekends you all buy pretty satin fabric and sew little pillowcases for them. I'm grossing myself out here. Old Lady City, table for one.

Next on the agenda for Geezerville is this:
I have to draw my eyebrows on every morning.

I know, I know, that picture is creepy, but it's creepy that I have to draw on my eyebrows every stinking morning. Where did they go? I've always been fair of face and hair, and I have always used a pencil, however I have to use TWO DIFFERENT ONES now. One to put the color on, and one to keep it on. If I don't use the second one, then my eyebrows just slide off...to who knows where? Do they evaporate? Have you heard of eyebrow evaporation before? Because I have it now. Is it a medical condition?

Which brings me to the next thing: medical conditions. While I'll give you that I don't need a pregnancy test ever again; as one grows older, one's ears start perking up to medical conditions that begin to plague you and your peer group. When I was young, we would all sit around and tell birth stories. The bigger, the scarier, the more screaming the better. It didn't matter how many times we heard a story of birth, we always listened like it was for the first time. We were horrified yet couldn't seem to cover our ears. We had to hear it. We had to speak it. And our stories got better with age. I was able to tell birthing baby stories that covered just about every single way someone could birth a baby. I can't really tell you at what age we stopped with the birthing of baby stories, but stop it has. We've moved on to more fertile ground.

We still have to hear it, and we still have to speak it, however the subject has switched from giving life to watching it go haywire. You wouldn't believe some of the things I've heard. And, I hang my head in shame to admit this: Shared. Head stuff. Mouth stuff. Cyst stuff. Bowel stuff. Goiter stuff. Vein stuff. Stuff growing where it doesn't belong stuff. And the ever popular night sweat stuff. It is not pretty. And from what I hear, all roads lead to Depends. I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I sure do appreciate my bladder. viva los bladders. VIVA LOS BLADDERS!!!!!

I think I might have sounded a little out there and lunaticish just now. Despite all this, there's something worth rejoicing over. I rejoice over the fact that I'll never ever ever ever have to wear, or can never ever ever ever be made to feel like I should wear anything like this Or this: Between that, the no pregnancy test thing, and being in the middle of the viva los bladder window, I'd say I'm living pretty large.


I knew it. You all wish you were 53.