Confessions of the Formerly Hot

So I used to be what they call hot.  I mean, I never had the traffic stopping kind of face or figure of a Victoria's Secret model, but I was pretty and I liked being pretty.  That was then.

Throughout my 50th year I started to experience a sort of transformation, where the wrong things started to grow (a GUT?  When did I ever have a GUT?!) and many things started to droop.  I mean, what happened to my jawline?  The shocking part is how quickly it all happened.  One day I am thinking I am holding up pretty well and a month later I am wondering how that old woman got in my mirror.

Now at last I am in the position of never being able to flirt my way out of a situation.  Honestly, I probably shouldn't have even been trying for years, but when 90% of your customer base is male and over 60 it is still worth a shot. At this point in my life I am thanking God that He saw fit to have me born into a family that had two smart parents who valued a college education.  As a diner waitress right now I would be racking up the penny tips, especially with my bad attitude.

Here I am, struggling daily with Weight Watchers and Deep Wrinkle Smoothing Cream and working out to Just Dance 2 in the basement.  Not feeling sorry for myself (much), but still wishing I had the kind of excess income it would take to pay for that Lifestyle Lift to pin back my jawline.  And maybe a little lipo.

But the thing that matters is that my husband still thinks I am hot.  The man is still crazy about me and I love him like crazy too.  Funny to be thinking this way, but this is now my prayer for my children - that my son's future wife and my daughter's future husband will think they are hot for the rest of their lives.  It is a wonderful gift.

Cat Lady

Is it possible to move from being a lifelong dog person to become a cat person?  Reggie was the best dog ever and I have to admit I still miss him.  When I come home and there is no wagging tail at the door I still hate it, months and months after we lost him to doggie cancer.

There is a gap in my life now with a lack of opportunities to nurture.  I could work in the church nursery except to be honest I have gotten less and less interested in any child who does not share my bloodline.

With Jim traveling so much I am alone a lot.  A LOT.  And no amount of great music played full blast on every set of speakers in the house can make up for the fact that I am the only living being within.  But a dog (by far the best pet on the planet) is too much work and too noisy for Jim who works from home.  I used to say that cats are EVIL but now what is appealing is that cats are EASY.  Silent, self entertaining, apparently even cuddly if you can find the right one.

M says she will move out if I get a cat.  I told her to write often.  She will be home for Easter break in two weeks and has agreed to go with me to the humane society to see if there is a cat we can both warm up to.  Should be interesting.

PS on May 19th:  No cat.  Still quiet here but M comes home for the summer tonight.  Maybe I'll look in the fall . . .

Zombie/Zombies

This morning when I woke up I had been dreaming about taking my son to his first day at preschool.  The sense of loss was so intense that I immediately teared up.  During the day, in my conscious state of being, I never think of myself as a mother who longs for her children in a younger time, but there I was.  Craving the presence of that child who trusted me so completely, opened up his mouth wide to let Jesus into his heart, asked me to become a professional singer when he heard me singing harmony to the songs on the radio.  You forget how wonderful it is to have a life so deeply woven into your own with such a strong and profound love.  You forget how amazing it is to love someone enough to be willing to kill for them, or die for them, and you forget how important you were to them once upon a time.  And there it was, so raw that it hurt and I lay in bed and tried to return to the dream and cried some.  My son and daughter and I will never have that kind of relationship again.

At work (I never claimed to be good at writing transitions, that is all you get), we reviewed a client's website where the search results turned up different results when someone searched 'zombie' instead of 'zombies' (plural), and I thought -- there it is.  To be wishing for that old relationship is as unproductive as wishing that corpses would stand up and start moving.

Yep, I was in the middle of that meeting and going off on that bizarre mental tangent.

To have my children return to that earlier state would yield emotional zombies.  They have to become adults, even if that means rejecting everything I hold true.  They have to leave and find their own path and their own social circles.  Because no one wants a zombie around.  Or zombies (plural).