Every day it becomes increasingly clear that aging involves more than taking a Glucosamine Chondroitin pill with my lunch. (The creaking of my knees can be heard three reformers down in Pilates class, and every session my instructor says, "Ew. Amy is that your knees?") Still, I forge ahead and fight the daily fight of trying to eat only protein and perfecting the art of drawing on my disappearing eyebrows, making me look like Witchipoo from H R Puffenstuff.
This is how my day starts: I wake up and immediately tell myself, "I will not eat toast for breakfast." I go to the refrigerator and take out two hard boiled eggs. I peel them carefully, and slice them into perfect little rounds. I salt and pepper them. I sit at the table and chew each slice. I tell myself "Good for you eating protein for breakfast! Now this will hold you over until lunch when you will eat lettuce with tuna.You go girl!"
I then head into my office and turn on my laptop anxious to get a full day of writing in. I pull up a fresh screen and stare at it for about three minutes. I then log onto Facebook where I take an IQ test, and a quiz to see what type of tree I am. From there I go to Craigslist looking for a job that pays a lot of money but where you work from home like one day a week. This whole process takes roughly 30 minutes. I then realize I am starving. I go to the kitchen and make two pieces of rye toast. I think from here we can guess that the lettuce with tuna is not happening either.
Clothes shopping has also produced new challenges. First of all, why do I continue going into Anthropologie? What is actually happening to me in that dressing room as I try on see through peasant blouses and billowy long skirts that look adorable on young girls but make me look as though I should be outside hanging laundry in a shtetl? Is there some kind of weird gas or something they release making me tell myself that "OMG this is SO me" only to get home and realize there is no way I can leave the house in these garments? Also I have stock piled wall sized letter A's wrapped in bright fabric and a million little bowls with painted peacocks on them. I have to stop going in there. Seriously.
On the upside, life is pretty good right now. I love my little waterfront house, and I love M even though he insists on making the bed every morning (meaning I have to get out of it) and refuses to watch any of the Housewives, which I totally do not get. My kids are doing pretty well, still finding their way but, finally those pesky legal issues seem to have subsided. At times I worry about my financial future but then remind myself that of course eventually my book will sell, it will become a blockbuster movie and I will meet Meryl Streep, so that usually calms me down.
So perhaps this is the part of life where I decide I am content yet hopeful of good things that may come my way, mainly becoming a published author, a close friend of Jon Hamm, and at some way later future date, a grandma, or at least a mother in law. I will certainly contemplate this today, over coffee in my peacock mug and two pieces of sourdough toast.