Hot Flash, Weight Gain, Oh Joy, I Have Been Planning For This Day Since I Was a Little Girl.

I am turning forty-nine this year.  I don't imagine people assume I am lying, as they do when one says twenty-nine is the new number, unless perhaps, forty-nine is the new twenty-nine. Maybe we could start a campaign.  One bright spot; when I told the doctor my age, he was surprised.  He would have guessed younger.  I told him that would be the fat filling in all the wrinkles.  No Botox for me!  This almost wrinkle free face is all mine, but so is the rather, shall we say, Reubenesque rear end.  I would love to think that last line was funny, but somehow I don't.

If you are under forty and reading this, feel free to laugh, but believe me, it won't be the last laugh.  I will save that for myself when you turn forty-nine.

It is a curious trick nature plays on the poor unsuspecting woman.  We see our grandmothers when we are small.  They are women that, shall we say, may or may not have aged gracefully.  We watch our mothers age as we enter our prime that is, without question, eternally ours. We scoff at the possibility that could be us someday.  We grow up blissfully, counting the days until our first date, our first kiss, the fairy tale love that comes with the most beautiful, all important, white princess gown on a day that belongs to us alone, and I suppose the groom.  Finally, the practically perfect, lovely and intelligent, babies that we and our prince charming will make.

 
And they lived happily ever after.  Refer to picture perfect bride and groom at the top of the blog.

How can it be that we think time stops with the practically perfect intelligent babies?  Sure those older women admire our babies in their practically perfect prams and tell us, "Enjoy this now,  it goes by in the blink of an eye."  At best we are polite and humor this foreign species of woman, with an, "I am so sorry you are old." smile.  Why is it we didn't believe them?

I believe them now.  I believed them when, what seemed like the very next day, I was on the receiving end of one of those "I am so sorry you are old." smiles.

When in the hell did this happen?  I don't remember getting "older".  I feel the same on the inside, I just don't look quite the same on the outside.

Just know, that when we "older women" tell you, "Enjoy this now, blah blah blah."  It will come as a complete surprise to you, as well, when that day comes, and it will, during your eternal prime and we, old women by then, can say, "I told you so."


Until next time...