Every night both Small Ones get up, shout for water, or do some other very loud thing that is the exact opposite of staying there and going to sleep.

About three times a week we get this shout from Small One A’s room: “MOM! DAD! I GOT HURT!”

Husband and I look at each other quizzically. “How does she hurt herself when she’s supposed to be sleeping?” one of us will ask, and the other will sigh and stomp up to the bedroom to assess the damage.

(Ok, I admit it, I’m the stomper- not the most mature option, I know, but that’s just how I roll).

The other night I was in the office trying to get caught up on work when suddenly Small One A rushed into the room clasping her hands over her nose. “IGOTTASTICKTOERUPPERNOZ!”

“You have a stick to it in your noz?” I asked, trying to decipher.

Small One A immediately unclasped her nose and shoved it into my direct line of vision. “A STICKER!” She screeched, shaking her finger at her nose. “Up my NOSE!”

Still, I could not believe this. A sticker, up her nose? Is this even possible, I wondered, staring at her in awe. Now, if it were possible I knew my daughter would figure it out. She’s crafty that way. Still, a sticker? In the nose?

When I didn’t move quickly enough, Small One A shouted, “MOMMY! GET IT OUT!” She then began clawing at the outside of her nose as though she were being attacked by killer bees.

“Are you serious?” I asked, pulling her closely. I looked up the small black hole, through the flakes and clumps of snot and hair, and saw nothing but darkness. “I’m sorry,” I told her, shrugging. “I don’t see a thing. Maybe you just THINK you got a sticker stuck up your nose.”

She then began inhaling crazily, singing a tune with her nostrils. “It’s up there! Get it out!”

“Okay, okay! Stop sniffing,” I told her, because by this point I was afraid she was right and she might suck that sticker up even further. Once she did this with a piece of spaghetti, which she proceeded to gag out of her mouth. I did NOT want to see this happen again.

(I don’t know why stuff keeps ending up in her nose. I DO know she enjoys smelling things, so perhaps this is part of the problem).

I made her bend way back and tried to locate said sticker once more to no avail. I grabbed a tissue from the desk, held it to her nose and said, “Blow her out!”

And she did.

Yes, the sticker, which she had folded in half so that it resembled more of a cylinder than a square, flew out of her nose and onto the tissue. Both Small One A and I stared in utter shock and disbelief. Then I laughed so hard I peed myself. But just a little.

“Holy cow, Batman! You DID have a sticker ck stuck up your nose!” I ran into the living room just as any mature mom would do and shoved the tissue straight into Husband’s face. “Check this OUT! She had a freaking sticker stuck up her nose!”

“No I didn’t!” Small One A cried, fearing trouble; but the evidence was right there, surrounded by snot.

“How did you get it up there?!” I asked.

Small One A shrugged. “I was smelling it.”

I looked down at the sticker. “But this wasn’t a scratch and sniff,” I answered.

“I know.”

“Then why were you smelling the sticker?” I asked, confused.

Small One A shrugged. “Because I’d stuck it on my butt first, and I wanted to see what it smelled like.”

And with that little story, I bid you a good day!

For the sake of keeping all guilty parties protected, I will call her Frumpalicious.  I call this to her face, so she knows my views. I’m not keeping any secrets here, other than her true identity, and I’m only doing that because I don’t want her to freak out one day if a reader walks up, pats her on the back, and says, “Dear XXX, I’m so sorry your ‘friend’ Menopausal Mom writes such terrible things about you!”

But I digress.

Last night. Phone call.

Frumpalicious: “I did my hair tonight.”

Menopausal Mom: “Uh-huh.”

Frumpalicious: “I know what you are going to say, but I didn’t have the thirty or forty dollars to color it at the shop.”

Menopausal Mom: “Oh.”

Frumpalicious, after a very lengthy pregnant pause. Then, “I know. I should have just paid it.”

Menopausal Mom: “So, what color is it this time? Would you have gotten the chemically enhanced blond nearly green, or the dark black eggplantish hue?”

Frumpalicious: “You remember Tang?”

Menopausal Mom, who drank gallons of Tang as a kid and who was getting excited at the simple memory of the sugary-sweet drink (and wondering if it were still for sale and, if so, whether or not I could sneak out of the house to purchase a few tubs later that night): “Absolutely! Which flavor?”

Frumpalicious: “Orange.”

Menopausal Mom: “Oh, I looooved orange!”

Frumpalicious: “I’m talking about the color, not the taste.”

Menopausal Mom: “Oh shit.”

Frumpalicious. “Exactly.”

Ya see, here’s the thing: Frumpalicious decided, sometime between college and little beast number two, that spending money on herself - you know, so she would look, well, like a normal product of society - was no longer an option. She went on to ditch a variety of goodies most women over 35 require, such as makeup, a real hair stylist, and wrinkle creams.

For the past five years, Frumpalicious has dramatically changed her look, from somewhat hot - think a plump Jennifer Aniston with darker hair and smaller boobs - to a rounder, plainer, frumpier version of her former self.

Frumpalicious wears her bangs like this:

Enough said.

So I did what any good friend would do. I packed up a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates, and my camera, rode over to her house, snapped a shot of the mess the instant she opened the door, then doubled over and laughed so hard I sort of peed my pants, but only a little bit.

When she said orange Tang, she was not kidding. Frumpalicious looked similar to this, minus the spikes:

Frumpalicious had a few glasses of wine, and while she drank and cursed the Gods of hair color and bad directions, I listened. I’m a good friend this way: I listen. I told her it would be okay, we could get it fixed. She would not have to go into work the next morning looking like Bozo the clown in drag. No sir, all would be right with the world.

Finally, after her third glass, I said, “Listen, Frump, how about I give you the thirty dollars it will take to get you out of this mess? But only if you promise to never color your hair by yourself again.”

Frumpalicious considered this, then shook her drunken orange head. “No, no my friend, that’s not going to work for me.”

“Come on. It’s what friends do.”

She stood and then disappeared from the room for  a minute, returning with yet another box of hair color: This time, true brown.

“I got myself into this mess,” she proclaimed, “and now I will get myself out.”

I decided to watch. After all, that’s what friends are for. This time, when the color ended up looking something like this:

I remained positive.

Frumpalicious, staring at herself in the mirror through foggy eyes: “So? What do you think?”

Menopausal Mom: “Uh huh. Yea!” Nodding, trying to remain positive.

Frumpalicious: “Uh huh good or uh huh bad?”

Menopausal Mom, after a slight delay: “Well, better than before, right?”

Frumpalicious, shrugging. “What’s it matter, I’m a forty year old mother of three. Who really even looks at my head anymore?”

And you know, maybe she’s got a point!

Suddenly, the world was an open ball of exploration, and I was the female Columbus.

Following G’n'R, and my unabashed singing as the girls in the back stared at me as though I had grown a second head, Van Halen’s tunes blew through the speakers with ease. I was at a hotel then, twenty something, drunk, ready for the concert to begin. Then I was there, singing about ice cream men. Ogling Eddie. Ah, Eddie.

Then the bitch DJ came on, interrupting my back-to-youth time travels with this declaration. “That was a little Van Halen for you. Coming up next, some Pearl Jam, on the best classic rock station around.”

It was as though someone pulled the needle across the album. Everything stopped, including my heart. My foot tapped the brake unexpectedly, and I began to screech.

“Classic Rock? Are you kidding me! What does she mean by classic rock?”

From the backseat, Short One A said, “What’s classy rock?”

“Classic ROCK,” I yelled, “is music that used to be good A LONG TIME AGO!”

I stopped. Remembered.

Oh yea, that was twenty years ago, wasn’t it? “This is NOT classic rock!” I tried to emphasize, but the sizzle began to burn away and reality set in.

Sadly, I suppose it is classic rock.

You see, when I was listening to G’N'R back in the day, Seger and Floyd were considered classic rock.

You know, the guys who used to bring the house down but who, at that point, were older and, well, definitely not so attractive.

That’s where we are now, though, you see? Consider Eddie Van Halen. Back in the day, simply hot! Now? Well, take a look for yourself. Time has done to him what it has done to all of us - made us softer around the edges, fluffier and, well, wrinklier if you will.

Whitesnake, Great White, Motley Crue - these guys were the shit back in the day. Now, though, they are simply older musicians who, if they are still living the dream, are doing so playing in pool halls and convalescent homes. (That’s ok by me; when they lock me up in one of those nursing homes I want to know that Friday night’s dinner will be accompanied by a large glass of vino and the sounds of Jon Bon Jovi. I’m good with that!)

At some point, when I wasn’t looking, I went from listening to hard core rock and roll to Disney tunes and songs that had lines like:

Just a boy and a girl in a little canoe
With the moon shining all around

And, my friends, during this transition those rockers I loved were cutting their hair, getting married, and aging. Just like me.

I guess it happens to all of us.

And while this doesn’t make me feel any better about it all, I do wonder what Axl thinks when he hears himself being described as a classic rocker. Im sure, just for one second, he is back in his Camaro with the T-tops open, banging his head along in time to a tune about a girl with eyes of the bluest skies; and, for one instant, he’s young again.

For my classic rock friends, to times remembered. May this make you feel young again. (Oh, and I have to add the link, not the video, because my mom has dial up and if I attempt to embed anything into my post her computer may implode).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-AYAv0IoWI
 

Are you kidding me?

Tell that to my cracked knees, my arthritic hands, my graying hair, my sagging boobs.

“Oh yea, ” I retorted, cradling my Starbucks in one hand and a bottle of hemorrhoid cream in the other. “So what does that make you, a newborn?”

Forty is the new twenty only when you aren’t turning forty.

I don’t want to be forty. People say it’s great, it’s all good, they are so happy where they are in life that it doesn’t matter.

It effing matters.

There. I said it. Turning Forty Sucks.

Why Turning Forty Sucks: An Essay by A Menopausal Mom

I hate it that more than half my life ago I was in high school. Not that I liked high school; I hated it, too. But at least I had youth on my side when I was in high school. My eyes weren’t perpetually burdened by dark lines, and odd stray hairs didn’t pop up in funky places. My joints didn’t ache before it rained, and my hands were not wrinkled.

Why Twenty Was Good

My breasts, never large, were at least perky and cute, and my stomach, never completely small, didn’t contain this kangaroo pouch - the leftover remnants of two C-sections. I could hold my farts, most of the time, and that goes for my pee as well. Preparing for long trips didn’t make me want to OD on Valium, and I could stay up all night long drinking shots of anything and still look great (well, at least halfway decent) the next day.

I was young. I had life in front of me.

Now, seriously, what do I have to look forward to?

1. Menopause
2. Retirement
3. Death (That’s the end, folks!)

So I thought I’d make a list of the great things I can see about turning forty.

1. (There is nothing here)

Since I can’t seem to think of anything, I thought I’d make another list of things that are great about not being twenty.

1. I can buy booze now.
2. I can hold down a steady job.
3. I don’t have to date strange guys anymore as I try to find ‘my type.’

The rest, well, I liked.

I liked staying up all night, drinking shots of tequila while dancing around as though I were the hottest number this side of the Mississippi.

I enjoyed being stupid and dumb and ‘young.’

I liked knowing I could dream and dream and dream and maybe some of those dreams could come true - and that, even if they couldn’t come true, I had time on my side just in case.

Now, rather than dream I just want to nap. Like sands in the hourglass, as they say, these are the last days of my life.

I don’t have time left to write that great novel as an aspiring ‘young’ author. I don’t have time to make it big in Hollywood, even if i do go through extreme plastic surgery. And even if i do have time to become a doctor or a lawyer or some other high paying professional, I don’t have ‘time.’ I have children. A house. A family.

I no longer say, “This is what I want to do in my life.” I say, “This is what I hope for my children.”

When did this change?

So I have to do something extreme now, of course, to make up for it. To say, “Holy shit, forty IS the new twenty!”

I’m married, so becoming a cougar is out.

I’ve already run a marathon, so that is off the list, too.

Sky diving doesn’t thrill me, and quite honestly backpacking around Europe at my age seems, well, weird.

No, I have to think of something, and something soon. I only have a few months. I’m asking for your advice on this, folks. Please, tell me something I could do to embrace forty, to make me feel twenty again.

In the meantime, I’m off to waste hundreds of dollars on various lotions and creams that I hope will make me look, well, if not twenty then at least thirty-something.

Hey, that’s better than nothing!

Face it: Gone are the gropings in the back of the car. The steamy windows. The underpanties draped over the rear view mirror. The only time any of this happens is when I’m trying to change my daughters’ clothes after a long day at the beach, and I’m generally screaming at the top of the lungs in an angry voice while doing this.

No, date nights have changed now that we have two young kids.

Dinner out doesn’t happen, unless the two are in tow. When we do go out, we chug our wine so that the girls don’t accidentally spill it as they grab bread and salad and other food from the table as soon as the waitress sets it down. (You’d think they never eat, but my grocery bill can prove otherwise!)

The movies? Please! The last time my husband and I saw a movie alone was right before the birth of the second daughter. That night lasted five hours (movie AND dinner!). We had to rush home to not surpass that fifth hour since the babysitter cost $12 per hour and we were already well over $100 for the dinner, movie and sitter that night.

Last night my husband and i had date night. It went something like this:

1. Cheap but good bottle of Cabernet
2. Our swing out in the backyard

It started out slowly, as though it was our first date ever. We chatted about silly things, like how our garden was doing, and whether or not the cantaloupe plant would survive.

Then the wine loosened our tongues, and suddenly there we were, all alone on the swing, the wine warming our throats.

Funny how you can be in one place physically but in another place altogether on another level.

We weren’t in our swing in our backyard. We were in a tropical paradise, the two of us, with no worries in the world. We were laughing and joking about things that didn’t have the words kids, temper tantrum, diapers or bills in the sentences. We joked about when we first started dating. We laughed about my husband’s old roommates, all of whom were crazy. We talked about the long commute we used to have just to see each other, when we were both finishing up graduate school and living an hour away from one another.

Suddenly, our life was just about us, the two of us, right there and right then on that backyard swing.

The bottle of wine gone, we climbed into bed. It was almost 11. Late for us. You know, we have kids; we always have to get up early these days.

And early it was. At 4 AM the baby let us know that she needed something. What, we weren’t sure, so she ended up in bed between us, her little fingers and toes seeking our warm bodies, bringing us together. As I lay there trying to get back to sleep I realized this:

Date nights have changed, as have our lives. Those carefree days are gone. Now we are inundated with responsibilities and burdens so heavy that sometimes our backs feel as they are about to break.

And yet, these are the best of times.

I would so much rather spend the evening talking on the swing than groping in the backseat of the car.

I would so much rather get woken up by a precious, delicious little baby each morning, even if it is only 4 AM, than sleep until noon and wake up alone.

Menopausal Mom may sometimes complain about temper tantrums, poopy diapers, seemingly unsurmountable bills and other atrocities that being a grown up brings (not counting wrinkles, C section scars and flab!), but this time, this backyard swing time, this wake up at 4 AM to a crying baby time, is the best time in her life.

And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Step into a locker room and all I could feel was my heart pounding against my chest as I walked over to the bench and tried to take off my clothes and put on my workout garb without showing any part of my nakedness to the rest of the women surrounding me.

They, however, did not have this issue. By they I mean the older ones, the broads with boobs down to their knees. The ones you really didn’t want to see naked.

They let it all hang out, all over. In my space sometimes, even, and then, rather than cover up their C section scars and their sun spots and their rampant pubic hair they jiggled everything around and, gasp, spoke to me! “How are you today? Good workout?” in this self confident voice that I couldn’t believe.

I, in the meantime, attempted to cover up my private areas with my hands or towel or brush while averting direct eye contact.

What did they mean, talking to me while I was naked?

Then I had a baby.

I went through my ob/gyn appointments naked.

I lay out on the c section table naked, a group of doctors and nurses watching. I was even asked if I could allow an intern to participate in my second c section! I was hopped up on a morphine drip, arms strapped down, everything exposed under the bright white lights of an operating room. What was I going to say? “No, this really isn’t a good time for me?”

Then there were the enemas because, of course, I couldn’t ‘let one fly’ as my mother liked to say.

And the shavings.

And the catheter.

There was the breastfeeding, of course, and the problems associated with it, which constituted inviting in yet another stranger to wrestle my milkless boob into the baby’s mouth. Nothing like having some stranger twist and turn your boob as though it is a glob of playdough.

There were all of this stuff where, you know, I was naked as a jaybird in front of all of the world.

At some point, I stopped being nervous about it. I stopped thinking, as I stepped out of my panties, “Please let me have shaved today!”

I stopped worrying that my breasts weren’t as perky as they used to be. That my belly wasn’t as fit. I stopped thinking about that damn C section scar.

This morning I went to the gym. I stepped out of my bathing suit with pride. I didn’t hide anything. This is a mom’s body! I thought with pride. I have battle scars! I have survived!

While I was pulling on my shorts, my chest still exposed for all the world to see, a young twenty-something bombshell walked up and, of course, put her stuff right down next to mine. Her augmented breasts were perched high on her chest, her stomach was as flat as a board. They could have developed Barbie after her measurements.

She stripped right there in front of me, tossing aside her clothes as though she were sorting her wash. Then she turned my way, forgetting (or not!) that she was completely nude.

I lifted my hand to shield my post-baby breasts. She smiled a blindingly white smile and said, “Good morning! Did you have a great workout today?”

We were stoked. Sure it would be Jason, we were glued to our seats.

Then our friend revealed her thoughts. “She didn’t pick Jeremy. Jeremy and Jason are so much alike as far as being settled and where they are in life. No way will she pick Jason.”

Oh, of course she will, we said. She had to. Jesse is, well, he seems kind of young, right?

Maybe not so settled? He’s a pro snowboarder, not that there is anything wrong with that. But isn’t he the kind of guy you date? Isn’t Jason the kind of guy you marry?

Besides, her family loved Jason.

Yes, yes, it will definitely be . . .

Jesse?

Wow, I could have fallen out of my chair.

Oh wait, I did.

After I cursed a few times.

Jesse’s cute, he is, and I’m sure he is a great guy.

But still . . .

Then I realized the issue. Jason is older. Like me. Not as old as me. You know, hitting male menopause old, hair falling out old, hormones raging old.

But he is older. Has a kid. An ex wife.

Jesse, however, is young like her. He hasn’t been through the whole marriage and children process. He’s, well, fresh.

He can stay up late at night. He can go out and be adventurous. He doesn’t have a young one at home to think about, to consider.

Things change when you get married and have kids.

That I was confused and, well, a bit upset with her choice wasn’t a reflection on what a bad picker she was.

Instead, it was a reflection on my non-youthful age.

You see, once you hit old you stop thinking that the crazy carefree guys are attractive and instead you look more at the mature ones. The ones who will be there when the kid pukes all over your shirt in the middle of the night. The ones who have twenty bucks in their pockets at all times.

The ones who don’t say Rad in everyday conversation.

While Jason appealed to the girls at our table who were screaming at the television and trying hard not to spill our red wine as we shook our fists at the screen, I’m going to venture to guess that the younger girls around America, those in their twenties, totally understood and were shooting their fists up in the air in a congratulatory THANK HEAVENS wave when Deanne told Jason to get up off of his knee. (Interject here: Poor, poor guy).