BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN

I’m coming back to my blog after a very long hiatus. Maybe I just didn’t think my life was that interesting. Maybe I’ve been in a coma and just now waking up or maybe I was kidnapped by aliens and I’m just now returning to civilization after having been probed by them… (Well, Tinder hasn’t been working well for me lately so maybe I had a good time in outer space. I wouldn’t know though. My memory was erased!)

At any rate, I’m returning back to the page and putting it out there again. I’m older but not sure I’m necessarily wiser. In the age of Trumpism, I think we all feel like the life has been sucked out of all of us by this alien orange being and we’re losing who we are. But if we can’t find life interesting and art gratifying any longer then the Orange One has won. And quite frankly, I’m tired of his definition of winning. I want to win on my terms with art, love, friends, and cocktails again. And maybe some free health care would be nice, too!

So, I’m getting back to my roots, taking pen to paper (or in this case a keyboard and my very limited knowledge of cut, paste and html codes) and returning to publicly putting my life and thoughts on display. Get your head out of the gutter. The red light isn’t on but maybe the neon sign says “open for business” again. 

I’m back and looking forward to sharing, caring, and inflicting my thoughts on page again. 

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THE COOL AUNT WITH BEER

I think it is kind of cool the way, as you grow old, age becomes relative. In theory, it works pretty well; on match.com, not so much.

I was recently doing a search for available men on the website and I find it odd that most of the fifty year old men on the site look to be about sixty or even seventy and the forty year old men look a lot closer to fifty plus than they do their early forties. Why do we try to hide our age, when instead we should embrace it? (pst – I’m really turning 39…. AGAIN! Seriously!... wink. wink.) Do I have to search the thirty-somethings to find someone for me who is actually age-appropriate?!  What is age-appropriate anyway?

I’m still not convinced though that if I were eighteen, I’d be a Justin Bieber fan. Oh, if I was thirteen, maybe. Yet, he’s eighteen and if he were interested in a thirteen year old, well, we’d soon be seeing his name on a certain list! Perhaps his handlers are keeping him perpetually thirteen just to tap into that market. Somehow, I see that ending badly. I guess that’s why, at age thirteen, I didn’t become Mrs. David Cassidy after all.

Confession – I have a new obsession – the three young men (aka “the boys”) who have just moved in across the street from me. One of the three has bought the house across from mine and has taken in two of his friends as roommates to help pay the mortgage. Smart. They’re all really good looking, despite all three being in their early twenties; very early twenties. Double their age and add a few years to it just to reach my age. Ouch! I met the mother of one of them. I think she’s younger than me. Double ouch. They think I’m a cool neighbor and even invited me to hang out with them this past weekend. The attraction isn’t Mrs. Robinson at all; nor is it Harold and Maude by any stretch. Sadly, I think they see me more as a cool Aunt who has replaced giving out chewing gum with beer than as an objet de desire.

The film Magic Mike was an interesting study in age relativity. Channing Tatum is hot, don’t get me wrong, but Matthew McConaughey is closer to my age and thus I’d be more inclined to be attracted to him. Even Joe Manganiello, who was born the year I entered junior high school, is more age appropriate than the neighbors I’m currently stalking, er, I mean living across from. I so could get away with Cougaring that man and who would blame me?! Me-ow!

My hero is Susan Sarandon, who at the fabulous age of sixty-five, still exudes sexuality and glamour. If she’s had any plastic surgery, it’s damn good. She appears to be growing old gracefully. That’s how I want to do it – beautifully and gracefully. She also dates younger men and why the hell not!? You go, Girl! She embraces her age and doesn’t fight it. She doesn’t have to lie on her match.com profile. That’s why she’s so damn attractive.

It’s such a double standard, even in this day and age that seeing a twenty-three year old woman with, oh, say Sean Connery as her boyfriend, is considered normal, but if I were to date a twenty-three year old, people would just consider that I’m taking my son out to dinner and a movie, and not on a date. I realize that the Cougar thing didn’t exactly work out well for Demi Moore, who is our poster-child for rocking the age of forty-nine. But at least I can still dream of my youth as I scarf down my Ensure, adjust the fit of my Depends, and throw back some Geritol while I watch the boys’ goings and comings through my front picture window. Hey, it’s not technically stalking if you happen to own the property across from the place where you are actually stalking, right? These days Taylor Swift has validated my evil plan brilliantly, even if I was here first. 

 

On the Edge of Fifty!

It is the week before my birthday and one week and a year before a huge milestone for me. On September 30^th, I will turn 49. The thing is, I don’t even feel like I’m in my late forties.

When I was a young girl, I remember women in their fifties looking old to me. They had short, helmet hair, wore old lady clothes, and listened to old lady music like Glenn Miller or the Lennon Sisters. They used Rose Milk skin care cream because Lawrence Welk told them they could “really feel the difference!” And every woman over fifty smelled like Este Lauder Youth Dew and Coty lose face powder. Back in the seventies, it seemed to me that all women over fifty looked like Edith Bunker. 

I look nothing like Edith Bunker. My favorite outfit is jeans, an Amsterdam T-Shirt, an Alexander McQueen skull scarf, and black Doc Martins. My vintage pageboy hat is adorned with Punk Rock pins, and yesterday I cruised around town in my black convertible listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Vampire Weekend. I am definitely not the poster child for women about to turn fifty… or am I?

Today we’re active, educated, healthy, and vibrant. Some of us are becoming grandmothers yet we hardly look like we should even have children over the age of ten! We came of age in the era of Barbie, a woman who has already passed the fifty milestone and the ultimate woman who can have it all. 

Like Barbie, I have a Dream Home, a convertible and I too, broke up with my version of Ken (great to have as an accessory but not really needed to further my existence.) I’m the new face of fifty – independent and embracing the wisdom that half a century of life has given me.

Over the next year I’m going to document what it’s like being on the precipice of fifty – my highs, my lows and my in-betweens. Just passing the time until my complimentary copy of AARP the Magazine comes in the mail!