I’ve been perusing a few of my old posts, trying to do some organizing. It seems that there has been a poser here, most likely my evil twin sister (you know how they can be). I realize she is witty and wry, and most certainly extremely eloquent, but she has committed a most egregious act. She has given the impression that I give a rat’s a$@ about losing a few pounds in the month of Christmas! Imagine! A diet at Christmas time?! Was she on crack?! Who would ever believe that I would do such an assanine thing? What, with all the cookies, and cake, dips made with cream cheese, butter, the eggnog with extra nog, parties to attend at which you cannot just not sample the hostess’s efforts…it would be simply stupid to try to lose some weight at this time of year.

See, I think she had this wicked thought that with our 35th birthday looming so close, that maybe, in my obsessive compulsive way, I would want to “be my best”, or “feel young and great”, as if I could defy the numbers on my physical clock, or some such ridiculous nonsense. That I would actually consider using this minor hallmark of life to put the pressure on myself to remind myself that I am still alright. That age ain’t going to take me down without a fight. She may have thought that it would possibly depress me to have my favorite jeans fitting just a bit too tight (OK, really too tight) on the day I reach what some would consider a milestone. What a silly, silly notion. She might have thought that the sag growing under my arms when I lift them would make me feel older, less desirable. I think she has no idea of what she speaks. What does she think I am? Some vain aging ex-sorority girl who thought she’d have a fantabulous career in journalism and never ever saw herself as a housewife and mom of three who sometimes doesn’t shower for 3 days at a stretch and says stuff like “am I talking just to feel my lips flap or are you going to listen to me?”, and occasionally wishes she still got passing glances like she used to from the boys like the young hottie serving up lattes at the Starbucks, instead of being called “mam” and driving the minivan she swore she’d never have, or who worries about things like the leaves in the gutters and making the latest sale on lean ground beef and whether or not there’s transfat in the Reduced Fat Triscuits, or who thought she’d have traveled the world by now but has a hard time getting to her kid’s gymnastics on time, or actually cares that her once adorable bellybutton is now 7 times its original size and hangs 4 inches lower, and has to take a cocktail of antidepressants to deal with it all? Is that what she really thinks? It’s absurd. And to hang all that on something as mundane as a 35th birthday, as if it’s really all that closer to 40. Huh. Forty schmorty. It’s not like it means appoximately half my life is over, or anything. Or that I’m reaching an age at which I distinctly remember my parents and what they were like at say, 35. Or that I care at all about the fact that my hands are starting to get that slightly dried, papery, wrinkled and vaguely spotted appearance that not so young women get. Who gives a damn?! Not me, that’s for sure. I hardly even notice. I especially don’t notice the fine lines around my eyes, or that I use twice as much under eye concealer as I did 10 years ago, or get afraid of what I’ll have to do in 10 years more. Not one bit. I just could not care less that my doctor has now started advising me on things such a mammograms over the next few years, the need for increased calcium to avoid osteoporosis, or the potential advent of peri-menopause, should I go through that particularly early, which happens. As if it would bother me that the fertile, life giving years of my life are over? Never.

I think it’s all rubbish, and am embarrased that you had to endure the shenanigans of my evil twin. She clearly doesn’t know me as well as she thought. I haven’t even thought about how I would want to arrive at 35, or the fact that it is some 12 days and 10 hours away. And I most certainly have not ever been so self absorbed as to give thought to what I weigh or look like on some random birthday. Haven’t given it a thought at all.