“Dipshit” is the new “30”

By the time this entry is posted it will be my birthday.  And I will be 43 years old.

This one is hitting me kind of hard for some reason. I’m not really sure why….

Ohhhh wait.  I know why.

Because DAMN it sure is close to 45.

Which is pretty damn close to 50.

It’s all so pathetically cliché; I don’t feel like I’m 43.

I don’t feel like I was born in the flipping 60’s.

I don’t feel like I should need bifocals (which I absolutely do).

I don’t feel like I should be in peri-menopause.

I don’t feel like I should be getting night-sweats for no apparent reason – to the point I wake up dialing 911 for the fire department to douse the INFERNO that is surely raging in my bed.

I don’t feel like crazy, wiry gray hairs should be popping up all over my body.

I don’t feel like working out at least five times a week should enable me to only sort of maintain my current physique instead of actively improving it like it would have even five years ago.

I don’t feel like when I dance in my living room my kids and nieces should recoil in horror and embarrassment and beg me to stop because I look like a such a dork, when I know damn well I look cool.

I don’t feel like it should be necessary to don a huge floppy hat any time I’m near sunlight so that my ever-increasingly sensitive skin doesn’t literally sizzle with Shar Pei sized wrinkles.

I don’t feel like I should preemptively start adding “Bran” to my diet to stave off the “irregularities” I hear about in people my age on those God-forsaken daytime commercials.

I don’t feel like my back and my knees should periodically give out on me…when I’m SITTING DOWN.

You get the picture.

I know.  Small potatoes.  Nitpicky stuff.  I have no real complaints.  That’s a lie, I do.  But I’m trying to keep them in perspective.  I have the love of family and friends and three wonderful children, and I love them back.  I recognize this post is excruciatingly petty.  I’m nothing if not self-aware.  I don’t know…I guess 43 just seems like a crossing-over into the permanent “I could be your Mother” category.  It’s inane.  Believe me, I know.

Honestly, the last time I had a problem with an age was when I turned…wait for it…………. 27.  What a dipshit I was.

“Oh I’m so sad…I’m almost 30 and I haven’t won an Oscar yet, or written my novel, or been skydiving…”.  Puh-leeze.

I still haven’t done those things.  Oi.

If I could go back and visit my 27-year-old self, I’d say “Hey, Dipshit, look…” and I’d show her the course of my life up to this point.  Then I’d ask her, “Would you really change anything?  Really?”

My 27-year-old self would ponder thoughtfully (after the near-stroke and freak-out of seeing my squinting, profusely sweating, hunched over future self) and say, “Are you fucking kidding me?  Yes!  Yes!!!  Hell YES!!!….Wait, where are you going, Grandma?  The “Golden Girls” isn’t on for another hour!  Come back here!  Are you DEAF too….wait….!!!”

My future self would have been walking out the door into the time portal upon hearing that and flipping my past self the bird.  I don’t think I’d appreciate being the victim of my own caustic, taunting sense of humor.

And also because while I’d change a lot, and I mean a LOT about the course my life would take, 27-year-olds who are depressed about some day turning 30 are really just stupid.

Did I mention I have less patience now too?

I hope in sixteen years I can come back here, still relatively happy and healthy, and write about what a dipshit I am right now.

That would be pretty cool.  Yeah, here’s hoping.