The Countdown to 50

My 40’s has been a wonderful time for me. Besides for it being the only decade in which I haven’t gotten a divorce, I can look back on it with a certain amount of pride. After all,  I’ve  furthered my career,  raised my children to be productive members of society and so far the Oil of Olay creams have been pretty good to me.

I wasn’t looking forward to turning 49. I just would’ve preferred to rip the band-aid off fast and go straight to 50. That’s all people talk about anyway when you’re 49 the countdown to 50. But when I turned 49, I was so sure I was going to be “fifty and fabulous”, that I almost couldn’t wait to get there.

Then I turned 49-and-a-half.

Let me tell you about being half way to 50…Every morning you look in the mirror and gasp.  Aside from your “laugh lines” increasing exponentially,   gray hair overtakes your entire body and when you tweeze- it’s your chin. The other morning my reflection was Moses when he came down with the Ten Commandments, except in a pink robe.

If you can pull yourself together enough to make yourself presentable to the world, maybe you’ll do a little shopping to cheer yourself up. That’s what I did just a few days ago. First stop- Lord and Taylor, second stop my therapist. You see, the dressing rooms are designed to torture. The mirrors allow you to see your full body from the front and the back.  Was that squishy, dimply, sagging, blinding white thing that took up the width of a three-paneled mirror my rear end?  No wonder my Spanx  don’t work!  I remember seeing something like that in a" Ripley’s Believe It or Not", but I believe it was on a Russian centenarian with a goiter.  Ladies, do not bother to diet and exercise- Mother Nature has her own plans.

I can see neither close nor far.  I try to get into every silver car in the parking lot until I finally get to mine. For me, 32 degrees does not mean snow- it means maybe I won’t sweat that day.

Did I mention I didn’t get a divorce?