Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner

This weekend a group of couples went out to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday.

The night began with one of those places that serves endless meat. Let this sink in . Endless. Meat.

Vegetarians? No point in even darkening their door. If you aren't a carnivore, you should just cleverly move along in your search for kale.

Not to mention the endless array of side items. I joked that after my Survivor feast-like eating, surely in my stomach, in the crevices along the meat, there would be space for two creamy bowls of lobster bisque. Like stomach Tetris. All spaces utilized. Of course there would be room.

By the end of the meal, I was nauseous. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Meals like this only come along once a decade. All you can eat gourmet food? Yes, please.

After lots of good conversation and regaining our momentum, we left the restaurant. But as one of my friends once joked, I guarantee if I had rubbed my belly and peered at it lovingly, I could have easily parked in the expectant mother spot at Buy Buy Baby.

After the meal, this group was going dancing! Turning 40 is, seriously, a big deal.

We went to a local place to chat, listen to the band, and dance. We were definitely older than many in the place, but not the oldest by any means.

At one point in the evening, because they were playing all of the right music, all of the ladies hit the floor and began dancing like it was nobody's business. Unabashed, happy dancing.

And then, after a half hour or so,
I happened to notice a group of very young girls at a table laughing. It didn't take me long to realize they were laughing at us.

At first it stung a little. Were they laughing because we were older? Or maybe because I wasn't a size 2? One of them even apparently made a comment to one of our husbands, not knowing it was one of our husbands, that we were funny. It dampened my spirits for all of about 30 seconds, and then I resumed my less than perfect dancing.

Later on, after a wonderful night with wonderful friends, I thought about it again, and it hit me.

I don't think they were laughing because we had twenty years on them, or even because we weren't all stick, model thin.

I think they were laughing because we were amusing and shocking to watch because we had absolutely no inhibitions. We didn't care that we were older. We didn't care that we weren't size zeroes. We didn't care that we didn't dance as well as Jennifer Lopez. And we certainly didn't care if a table of twenty- somethings self- consciously huddling in a booth found us amusing.

We had moved from that phase of life where you walk into a room wondering if people like you, and had moved into the phase where you walk into a room and wonder who you like.

The term 40 and fabulous has a lot of truth behind it. I think, or at least I choose to think, that they were laughing because we were a rare sighting to them. They are at the age where you worry when you leave to go to the bathroom if your friends are secretly saying you should audition for Bert on Sesame Street if you don't hurry up and get those eyebrows waxed. They are at the phase where you won't dance in front of a room full of people, because heaven forbid, what of your dress shows a little back fat or what if you lack perfect rhythm.

See, my group was past all that. We are imperfect, as everyone is, but also past the point of letting it dictate our actions. That is what is surprisingly great about the 40s.

It's always a little sad to me to see people desperately holding on to their youth. Becoming obsessed with their imperfections to the point that they are not truly happy in their own skin. I've always thought that the more obsessively you fight to look super young, the older you seem to look. The ones who look young and happy, are the ones enjoying their families and friends and life in general.

These people should be embracing life, and laughing. And as we know, like in Hollywood, some are so obsessed with looking younger that they are to the point that you can't even tell when they actually ARE laughing.

I'm not suggesting that health and how you present yourself to the world aren't important.

I'm just saying that in your forties you begin to realize that life exists outside the realm of self-obsession.

You begin to distance yourself from the people pointing fingers in the booth, and surround yourself with the happy ones on the dance floor.

See, now I know why those girls were laughing. They hadn't seen
many like us before. This laughing, carefree, imperfect group of women not caring a thing about what the world thought if them. Only having fun...together.

Someday those 20-something girls will get it.

But one thing is for sure. None of them had as much fun as we did.

And I would like to change that saying, "Dance as if no one is watching."

I say, "Dance like everyone is watching...and feel GREAT about it!"

Long Live Dorothy Hamill

I so wish I could be the woman in my dreams.

Just last night I dreamt I solved a
murder.

And I was BRILLIANT with it too. I even talked to the murderer and got information out of him with my impeccable, Academy Award winning role playing. I tricked that sucker and got all kinds of info out of him. AND, in this SAME dream, I also donated items to an older woman in need AND found a really pretty yellow bath mat for my house on sale for $11.

All in the same dream.

Then it's possible for me to wake up and shuffle to the kitchen to see a big pile of damp laundry.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Remember that feeling when you were little of wanting to be a figure skater, and a marine biologist, and a writer, and a scientist, and Nancy Drew, and Angela Lansbury where crimes you could solve fell into your lap, like every Sunday night?

Well, I still feel that way.

So much to do and so little time.

I'm pretty sure the figure skating thing might be out, but I'm still waiting for a crime to fall into my lap. One time I heard people talking over a baby monitor and got really jazzed hoping they were planning a murder, but it all ended up being rather disappointing.

Time just seems to be moving too quickly.

As my friends know, I'm an avid suspense novel hoarder, and just this summer my mom and I decided that I might not even live long enough to read all the books I've collected. Ouch.

It's no secret that my dream is to publish a book. People tell you things like, "So-and-so was rejected 113 times" and "Stephen King wallpapered a room with rejection letters" and "John Grisham ended up having to sell A Time To Kill out of the trunk of his car," well...I know these comments are supposed to make you feel better, but honestly, in your mind you are thinking, "If flipping STEPHEN KING and JOHN GRISHAM were rejected that many times, maybe I should just give another go at that figure skating gig."

And let's be real, I'm already past the point I had hoped. It would have sounded WAY cooler to be tied to the phrase "was published during Junior year of college." But I wasn't even trying to write then and was more concerned about how to stamp "I love AOPi" on the back of my boxers for the ATO pajama mixer.

Some people simply blow me away with their productivity. You know, the ones who wake up and make homemade pancakes and then play a board game with their kids after painting the bathroom and making homemade salad dressing for that night's dinner. Then they head out for errands, and it only takes them 10 minutes to leave the house because in this magical world everyone knows where their shoes are and have brushed teeth without being told.

When they get in their cars, the gas tank is full and it doesn't say they have 11 more miles until they are sucking fumes.

Then when they are home from errands, they water their vegetable garden, pressure wash the driveway, and play a second board game with their kids after correctly teaching them how to dice carrots for their fresh dinner salad, from their garden of course.

Then after dinner, everyone takes a brisk walk together, has plenty of time to read stories before bed, and all the kids are in bed and mom and dad have plenty of time to relax and unwind before bed.

Oh, and these people iron. They actually iron.

As if.

Hello de-wrinkle button for the fourth time...

(I even posted a pic of my once-spotless laundry room on Facebook so it could be documented like Haley's Comet. Fleeting and beautiful.)

Oh, and in these households, no one ever has to say, "Just slide those clean socks and folded T-shirts over a little and try not to get ketchup on them."

These are also the same ones whose kids have done DreamBox Math twenty minutes every day on the computer since school got out. Hey, I had grand plans too.

And we are half way through City of Ember, thank you very much. We still have 48 hours for crying out loud.

But back to the issue at hand. Time. There is not enough of it.

I have always wanted to experience everything I possibly could. And I want the same for my children. I want to eat pasta in Italy under the stars on a crisp night, campout with the whole family in an elaborate treehouse with little white lights and fireflies swarming around, go on a mystery cruise (and solve it of course), expose a major government coverup, act in a play as an adult, solve a murder, publish a book, show my children the whole world, open a small mystery bookstore that looks like the one in the movie You've Got Mail, write a political speech for a candidate who is actually ethical and can make a difference, take the family on a mission trip, serve in a soup kitchen, meet Tom Selleck, and have a clean laundry room.

I absolutely KNOW all of these dreams can come true.

I just have to go back to bed.

Look out Angela Lansbury.