lifestyle

“One of the benefits of being a mature well-educated woman is that you’re not afraid of expletives and you have no fear of putting a fool in his place”
Dame Judi Dench

I fucking love her.

Aging; getting older; lemme guess, you don’t want to talk about it.

Too bad. Fool.
Spoiler alert — we’re all going to grow older, but we don’t have to AGE.

A couple of years ago hubby and I sent a giant bouquet of black flowers, like something stolen off of Lincoln’s funeral pyre, to a friend for her (wait for it)… FORTIETH birthday.

If I remember correctly it even had a sash running across the middle with the word CONDOLENCES in silver letters.

She was in full denial, not embracing her inner forty-year old AT ALL and since both of us were well into our fifties at the time, well, I know, it was the epitome of jackassery — but it was also damn funny.

I got the general idea from the FIFTIETH birthday party of a friend that I attended over a decade ago. The theme was an Irish Wake.
The flowers were different shades of black, everyone was urged to wear black clothes (which in LA is not a stretch), the guys were given black armbands, there was a coffin filled with Guinness, even the cake was draped in swags of black.

The invitation looked like a death certificate. The demise of her youth. “All your good years are behind you, consider the next couple of decades God’s waiting room” was the joke in the toast that was structured like a eulogy — it was funny as hell at the time — now I’m not so sure. What message were we sending her? What were we telling ourselves? Did we all really believe that fifty was the end of life as we knew it?

More and more studies have come out recently about aging and how our beliefs can effect our bodies along with our spirits. You are as old as you feel the studies say, which has nothing to do with our chronological age.

My husband lies and says he’s seventy just for the compliments that follow.

We are growing older there’s no denying that, but a huge section of the population, us baby boomers, are not aging anything like our grandparents or even our parents for that matter.

Fifty is the new thirty, sixty is the new forty.

Diet, exercise, yoga, meditation, Botox, Spanx and the moderate love of the dark arts: coffee, alcohol and chocolate, have allowed many of us to sidestep some of the ravages of time.

My only regret is the fact that sunscreen wasn’t invented until after I had already fried myself, like a piece of crispy bacon, in baby oil for a decade. All things considered my skin isn’t THAT bad, I can only thank genetics for the fact that I don’t look like the wizened overly tanned woman in “There’s Something About Mary”.

As I approach sixty (just writing that seems surreal) I find myself hanging around with forty-somethings  more often because I have no intention of acting my age — to start winding down – I’m just getting started with life.

A couple of years ago, on a random Sunday, as an act of wanton what-the-fuckery, I decided to get my nose pierced. Here was my thought process: Damn, I just saw three women in a row with a little tiny diamond in their nose. I wish I’d done that…heywaitaminute… What am I talking about? I CAN do that.

So I did.
That very day.

As I walked out the door with a friend on my arm for moral support, I informed my husband where I was going “Do I have anything to say about that?” he inquired, a little taken aback.

Nope.

Most of my friends never even noticed. A couple said they were happy I was wearing the diamond again (like I’d had the piercing all along).

After seeing Christiane Northrup talk about aging, our beliefs and attitude (she’s all over the media lately with her new book “Goddesses Never Age”) I could feel the sass start to bubble up inside. What would it be this time? Tattoo? Pole dancing? Another piercing?

With all of my accumulated fifty-seven years of conviction I strode in to see my hairdresser/friend Reny on Tuesday, (in our thirty year relationship he has probably dyed my hair almost every color imaginable — except for green – I hate green) and together we decided that yes, Royal Purple would look the best with my skin tone and my burgeoning grey. It’s subtle really, and just underneath… waiting to surprise the people that pay attention.
Watcha think?

Okay you guys, what little thing (dying your hair is a little thing, you can always dye it back) can YOU do to halt your aging process and help yourself look more like you feel inside?

A wrist tattoo? (that could be next for me), stop dressing your age? Grow your hair long? Eat dinner after 7 p.m.? Take a dance class? Join a book club with women in their thirties? Go see live music?

You tell me.

Carry on you crazy fools,
Xox

“Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else.
We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There’s a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint.
You don’t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.”
~Orson Wells

I used to LOVE loligaging around, reading and listening to music – simultaneously.

It was a habit I got into during school. I could only study with music playing or the TV on in the background. Nothing too heady, The Price Is Right or The Sonny And Cher Comedy Hour would drone on in the background, helping my brain process information.

Studies confirmed that there were others like me.
At least that was the lame excuse I would give my parents. I would sneeeeeer it out of my sideways, teenage mouth, like a hoodlum with the stub of a cigarette; when they’d yell for me to “turn that shit down!”
I lied about it so much, it became…true.

So what the hell has happened to me?
Now, as a writer, I need complete and utter silence when I sit down at the computer.
Is it age? Is my brain so busy just trying to conjugate a verb, that I can’t handle the distraction?
And forget about reading. I have six books open right now, all of them half read and only partially understood.

Suddenly, I’m a writer who doesn’t read, a singer that doesn’t listen to music.

I guess I can just add that to the list:

I’m also a woman that never lactated, or used her uterus for the good of the world in ANY WAY.

I’m a ex Jeweler who does’t wear or look at jewelry.

I’m a former Nationally Rated (fibbing here, but I could have been) professional shopper who hasn’t bought ANYTHING that wasn’t for someone else, since the inception of the boyfriend jean.

I’m a foodie who consumes steamed veggies and green drinks everyday and just to be cruel, I force my husband to do the same; utilizing his Catholic guilt.

I’m the biggest slug. The most ginormous lazy bones Jones, exercise loathing, couch potato, that God ever had the imagination to create; yet, I go to the gym – everyday.

WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH ME?

I’ve become a walking contradiction. But what I’m starting to realize is that we ALL are…in our own ways.

I know certain individuals that are vegan, gluten free, alkaline water junkies…who smoke and eat bacon; hoity-toity fashionista’s who wear Target with their designer duds, Yogi’s who teach meditation that are high strung and judgmental, financial advisors that are millions of dollars in debt, Prius drivers who waste every resource imaginable, and drive like bats out of hell; and intellectual giants – who can’t tell time.

So I figure, seeing that it’s part of the human condition, living a contradicted life, that it would be unfair, almost cruel, to hold ourselves or anyone else for that matter, up to too much scrutiny.

I promise to look the other way, if you promise to do the same. (As far as I know, I’m still someone who can keep a promise.)
Deal?

You KNOW you’re contradicted, think about it and tell me how!

Loving you all…today.
xox

If you want to listen instead:
https://soundcloud.com/jbertolus/youre-a-walking-contradiction