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Every night we put Small One A and Small One B to bed and tell them, “Stay there and go to sleep.”

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!

I have this friend.

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!

As Short One A, Short One B and I traveled down the freeway to grandma’s house for the weekend, I turned on the radio and scanned until I found one playing some great rock and roll. Guns and Roses blared about their sweet child, and suddenly I was twenty years old again. The sky was no longer black as night but deliciously blue and the sun shone on my un-wrinkled body with its warmth.

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
 

   

Yesterday I ran into a friend’s twenty-something child while in Target. When I told her I’m turning forty soon, she had the nerve to say as she patted my hand and gave me a wink, “But didn’t you know - forty’s the new twenty!”

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!