Does Life Begin at 40?

 

 

Right.  I'm three weeks into my forties.  I've coped well so far, I think. 

In fairness, this could be because I've been accepting flowers and cakes and presents and affection of all types.  I've had a whale of a time.

But now, sad to say, the cakes (yes, plural.  There was three.  They know me so well)  are eaten, the cards have been taken down, and the vouchers have been spent.  The glory bit is over, and I have to get on with being a woman in her forties.

The big day was a Saturday.  I had great fun for the weekend, but when Monday morning rolled around  and I had to get up and go to work, I decided that maybe I would start embracing this new stage in life, and become a grumpy old woman. 
Feck it, I thought, why not?  I'm forty, I may as well go a bit mad.

I was moany on Monday, testy on Tuesday, whiney on Wednesday and all-out psychotic on Thursday.

On Friday my sister and brother-in-law were bringing my two small nephews home to our fair land, and I abandoned the grumpiness and started getting all excited and giddy at the thought of seeing them.

But it hasn't all been fun and games and bad behaviour.

Unfortunately, I've been rather busy lately.  I haven't had a day off at home for yonks.  The upshot is that I have the whitest hair I've ever had in my life.  And I can't get it done next weekend either.

By the time I get my hair sorted out the white part, which doesn't usually get much further than a stripe at the top of my head, will be stretching down to my ears. 
This is not making me look less than forty.

I got some vouchers for my birthday, and had decided to buy myself some lovely makeup brushes. 

Actually, that isn't really true.  I didn't decide to spend the voucher on the makeup brushes.  My beloved brother, who was much braver than me when he was turning forty himself, asked what I would like.  My reply was swift and certain.

"The contouring and blending eyeshadow brushes from Esteé Lauder please."

"Jesus Christ" he said.  "Are you speaking gibberish? What do you want? Answer me properly."

So I asked for a voucher to spend on makeup brushes. 

Going to the beauty counter to get the brushes led, needless to say, to my buying unplanned makeup, which I was delighted with. 
I've tested it, played with it, admired it, and arranged it as attractively as possible in the bathroom. 
The only problem is with wearing it.  Nothing can detract from my snow white tresses and so there seems little point in even slapping it on.

I have recently suffered from a dull ache in my right knee.  I've never worried too much about it, I've a bad habit of sitting on my legs.  And my considerable weight is enough to put any joint under pressure even when I'm just moving around, sitting on it as well is too much for it to cope with, I suppose.
Anyway, in the three weeks since I turned forty the dull ache has developed into a sharp pain. 
There is no explanation for this deterioration other than my advancing age.

Twice last week I forgot social engagements.  I completely forgot plans to go out for lunch one day, and for after work drinks another day.  It's not that I wanted to miss these outings, I most certainly didn't.  But I genuinely and completely forgot them.

Three times in three weeks I've found myself starting sentences with "I don't approve of", which can't be a good sign, surely?

And more and more often, I find myself reaching for the teabags rather than the coffee jar. 
Tea, the choice of my mother, and her mother before her. 
Rather than coffee, the choice of young city slickers who walk around with Starbucks cups and complicated orders for semi fat latte mochachinos rolling off their tongues as if they were reared to it. 
I wonder if this means anything?
I’m guessing that it doesn’t mean I’m getting cooler, the older I get.

On the other hand, as part of my "using up my birthday vouchers on impractical things" project, I bought not one but two liquid eyeliners. 
Fair enough, I’ll have to die wondering whether I could ever have mastered the “flick” out the corner of the eye that the young and the gorgeous use every day.  If I tried a flick the eyeliner would just run into one of my crow’s feet and highlight it, for all to see.
Still.  Two liquid eyeliners.  It’s a comfort.  It would appear that despite my advancing years I'm not willing to give up the ghost just yet.

I've made the necessary hair appointment and will have conker brown tresses again before the week is out.

I went on a walking tour, yesterday, with a great group of people I know. 

I was fairly nervous, to be honest.  I wouldn't usually be one to trouble anything that can be defined in terms of "walking".  I was fairly sure that I'd either have a heart attack trying to keep up with everyone else going up a hill, or that I'd fall head over arse getting through a ditch, or over a stile. 
It was the kind of walking tour that involves climbing through ditches.

But although I had to make sure I didn't try to talk for a few minutes at the top of the hill, lest everyone know that I was far more out of breath than the 68 year old who was coming behind me, I didn't collapse, or fall over, or make a show of myself at all, really.

To celebrate this affirmation of my ongoing youthfulness, maybe I should go another way. 

Rather than just become a grumpy old woman, I could lose the run of myself completely.  The older I get, the worse I might behave.

I might start drinking on a much more regular basis. Maybe even on work nights. 
But only a small glass of wine, there's no need to go mad altogether.  It takes me two days to get over any more than a glass these days.

I think I'll start wearing makeup in an inappropriate way, i.e. wearing far too much, and in the wrong colours, the way old ladies who don't give a feck anymore tend to.
Except that would be such a waste of my new Esteé Lauder brushes.

I could start eating the face off everyone who annoys me.  I don't want to risk an ulcer or even a stress induced stroke from swallowing my temper all the time. 
Unless my rudeness is likely to make the person not like me, or even cry.  That's what I usually do when someone eats the face off me. 

I might stop doing anything I don't want to do. I might refuse to do what I'm asked, no matter what it is, and no matter how selfish it is not to do it. 
Unless it's a work thing, I suppose, I can't afford to lose my job. 

Maybe I should just carry on as I'm going?

I went to college in my twenties, so that when all my school friends were moving up the career ladder, and getting married, and being grown up, I was drinking in the afternoons and going to class for about three hours a day.

I’ve had adventures around the world I could only have dreamt about, when I was in my teens.

I’ve got the kind of friends that you usually only read about in books, funny, supportive, willing to put up with me.
And of course His Nibs and I remain a pair, and although we have our moments, he's an excellent friend.
I must say, it’s really not a bad life.

Maybe I don't need a new life philosophy, just because of my age. 
Maybe I'll just carry on doing more or less whatever I want, as I have been.
I know I usually enjoy a good moan but, dare I say it, is it possible that I'm doing absolutely fine, regardless of birthdays?

Middle Aged Madness

At what age does a person become middle aged?

When I was between the ages of ten and thirteen, my mother was in her late thirties, and I think I thought she was middle aged then.  I definitely thought she was middle aged when she was in her early forties and I was a teenager – She’s going to kill me if she reads this. 
My only excuse is that I was a teenager – I thought everyone who had had their twenty first birthday party was middle aged.

I’m not afraid to admit (well, not terrified) that in eleven and a half months time I will turn forty.  Forty.  The big four oh. 

I’ve decided I can start crying and caterwauling and swearing I’m only thirty five, which would fool nobody, or I can just embrace it. 

But I absolutely do not accept that I’m middle aged.  I think that’s a load of old nonsense.  Some people act middle aged in their twenties, and my Dad still hadn’t started acting middle aged when he passed away three weeks before his seventieth birthday.

I do have a couple of issues though.  Since I seem determined to pour out all my darkest secrets today, I’ll confess that quite recently I was brushing my teeth on a Sunday morning, and thought I saw a loose hair on my face. 

You probably can’t imagine my absolute horror to discover it wasn’t a loose hair.  It was growing.  Out of my face.  I couldn’t believe it.  It wasn’t a tiny thing either.  It was quite long.

So long in fact that I’m forced to accept that either it had been growing there all week and everybody had been too polite to mention it, or it had sprouted overnight.

So either my eyesight is failing – I’m not going to pretend I’m devoted to my makeup bag, but in fairness I do wash myself and moisturise on a daily basis – how had I missed it?

Or I’ve started to sprout inexplicable hairs from my face overnight.

I almost fell apart.  I’d heard this happens to older ladies.  I had absolutely no idea that it happens before we hit forty.

Obviously my initial reaction was to become hysterical and start trying to yank it out on the spot. 

It really, really hurt.  Tears immediately sprung into my eyes and I yelped like the dog does when we accidentally stand on his tail.

I started rooting frantically through the myriad of makeup bags and baskets on the bathroom shelves.  Blowing off the dust as I went along.  For some reason, I’m far more enthusiastic about buying makeup than about getting out of bed early enough in the morning to apply it.

Anyway, the fecking tweezers couldn’t be found.  I thought I was starting to have a panic attack.  I know, I know, there’s no big deal, this is just part of becoming a grumpy old woman proper, but I really wasn’t ready for it.

I tried to remember if people had been staring at the spot between my jaw and my chin all week.  Was I the only person who hadn’t known it was there?  The thought filled me with horror.  I have enough to deal with, with my large personage, without becoming known as the hairy faced woman as well.

Finally, I saw my eyelash curler.

Don’t ask me why, but in my panic I thought “yes, that’ll work, I’ll just catch the bastard in that as if it was a tweezers, and pull it out”.

I gripped the offending hair in the eyelash curlers, and gave it a quick tug.  I can’t stress this enough.  The pain of trying to pull it out was awful.  It was really, really, sore.  I’d rather suffer the agonies of waxing than tackle even one of these hairs again. 

Although tackling the feckers is probably going to be a weekly chore from now on.

As I pulled the hair, the flesh actually pulled into a point.  It wouldn’t come out! Shite.  I briefly wondered what possible excuse I could give for not going to work tomorrow, because obviously I couldn’t go like this.

As I pulled pointlessly, the eyelash curler started to drag its miserable way down the hair, until eventually it pulled off the end, futile.

Lovely.  The only success I’d had was in curling the fecking hair into a corkscrew shape.  Again, belief was suspended.  I’ve never found the eyelash curler to be even remotely useful in curling my eyelashes.

All I’d ever got from using it was pinched and sore eyelids.  That’s why I’d found it in the bottom of my least used makeup basket, I suppose.  But with this eyesore, it sprung into life and curled like nothing I’ve ever seen.

So now I’d actually styled it. 
I found the tweezers eventually, and it was no less painful removing it than  the attempt with the eyelash curler.

I’d really only just started to get over it all, when I got out of bed this Sunday morning.  Again, I went to brush my teeth. 

To discover I had no less than four large spots.  All over my face.  One each on my chin, my cheek, my lip, and my nose.

I don’t know where they came from.  I haven’t stopped washing myself or anything. I have no idea why this breakout occurred. 

Am I caught somehow in the middle?  Between witchy old lady and teenager?  Is that what middle aged actually means?  And if so, how long can I expect this caper to go on?

Maybe I should just stop brushing my teeth?  That seems to be where all the trouble starts.  And black stumps where my teeth currently are will match up lovely with my face hair, and my spots, don’t you think?