The 40th Anniversary Edition of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

You know you’re old when your childhood faves are now retro cool.

This was brought home to me the past few weeks by two very different events: meeting and interviewing the original cast and director of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, in honor of their 40th anniversary (yikes) and the release of the Ultimate 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition, and going to see Duran Duran – the seminal band of my High School years, on their All You Need is Now tour at Madison Square Garden.

First off, the cast of Willy Wonka is all but unrecognizable, except for Mike TV (Paris Themmen) which is weird, since he has, in the FORTY years (!) since the movie was released, lost most of his hair.  And yet, he looks the same. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s more the personality: he’s the same know-it-all personality as his now 40 + year old movie alter ego. (And might I mention that Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie Bucket, is also the same lovely, kind personality as his movie persona. Good casting.)

Duran Duran, however, especially Simon le Bon, dashing in his sparkly pants, looks unchanged.  More importantly, they sound unchanged.  Another thing I can’t explain.  Rock stars seem never the age.  Even Methusala, I’m sorry, I mean Mick Jagger, while he looks old, seems somehow ageless.  He’s looked old for decades.  The band played all the old hits, a few covers, a few new ones I didn’t know, and over all, rocked the house. And not just “for guys their age.” They rocked. Plain and simple. (Though while it’s a good thing their music still sounds the same as it did 30 years ago, they might want to bring their production values into the 21st centure. A flashing snowflake light? Really?)

What strikes me about both the band and the movie is how popular they still are today.  The movie is a classic.  Tim Burton’s try at a re-make just didn’t have the same cult appeal.  The fact that my kids love Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as much as I do makes me happy.  It makes me feel less old.

The fact that a bunch of  20 something year old girls were rocking out to Duran Duran…well, that made me feel quite old.  Because they don’t like Duran Duran because they are the hottest new band of the moment.  They don’t know the words because they are simply a part of life.  They like the band ironically.  It’s retro.

And I, am old.

Still, there was something undeniably sexy about Simon, and something incredibly thrilling about meeting the original cast of a movie I loved…and still love.

So as long as I don’t start wearing off the shoulder sweatshirts or shoulder pads, I guess having your childhood high points become retro hot point ain’t so bad.

If you’re interested in going to see the Duran Duran reunion tour - which was awesome – check out their tour schedule.

If you, too, want to reminisce about a childhood movie, Check out my interviews with the Willy Wonka Cast:

One of My Arty Farty Photos

I am never going to love my body just the way it is, and that’s OK.  Let me explain:

Yesterday, I read this post about a woman struggling with her post-baby body.  What struck me about the piece was that this struggle is new for her. She talks about how she never had body image issues until she had her second child.

Wow.

I cannot remember a time when I did not have body image issues. Well, maybe that’s not completely true – I distinctly remember a time in fourth grade when I was sashaying up the school steps in what I thought was a fashion-model way, when I realized to my horror that I wasn’t alone – my teacher, Mrs. Richardson was there watching. “You are quite the fashion plate!” she said. And while I had no idea what that meant, I knew it was good.  And I sashayed even more.

But that was it.  The last moment in memory when I wasn’t embarrassed by or self-conscious about my body.

Just yesterday morning I had breakfast with my high school boyfriend. When I carefully ordered a carb-free breakfast, he asked about it. “I just want to lose 10 pounds.” I said.

“Funny,” he answered.  “I remember having that same conversation with you in 1992. You’ve got to get over those body image issues.”

And that’s when it hit me.  I am not going to get over my body issues.  The last time I felt less awful (not good, mind you) about my body, was after I had swine flu and pneumonia two years ago.  I lost eight of the 10 pounds I’ve been trying to lose for 20 years, and gushed about the silver lining of having a potentially deadly illness.

It’s pathetic, I know.

I’ve tried to love my body the way it is.  I’ve read articles in women’s magazines that tout body acceptance on one page and photos of emaciated super-models on the next.  I’ve done that exercise when you look at yourself naked and pick one part of your body  you think is beautiful. (I picked my eyes. Not a body part, but it was the best I could do.) I even posed for artsy-fartsy naked photos a few years back in the hopes of feeling empowered and seeing the beauty in my own human form. It didn’t quite work out that way.  As photographs, they are lovely. As me, not so much. Those expensive pictures are hidden in a drawer somewhere waiting for the day my body is so old and decrepit that in the photos, it looks great by comparison.

So I’ve decided to try something new.  I’ve decided to accept that I’m never going to accept my body the way it is.  Quite frankly, it’s a relief.  Attempting the impossible has been exhausting.

It’s kind of like agreeing to disagree with a friend.  You’re not going to change your mind and suddenly decide that, why, yes, water-boarding is a great idea after all, but neither are you going to harp on it, or let it ruin your friendship.

The fact is, for more than 30 years I’ve felt uncomfortable – to varying degrees – with my looks. Why, now that age, gravity, and the inevitable crepe-i-fication of my skin has taken over, do I think that’s going to change?  It won’t. But I can accept that. Take my nose (please!). I don’t like my nose.  I’ve never like my nose.  But I’m not interested in surgery, and I don’t obsess about it.  It’s my nose. Move on.

I don’t see why that same tactic can’t work with my body image: I don’t like my body, but, 30 + years in, it’s clear that I don’t dislike it enough to starve myself/exercise hysterically/pay someone to surgically suck out the fat. So…move on.

I won’t quit railing against the male dominated media landscape that dictates women strive for an impossible physical ideal.  I won’t be happy that my daughter is growing up in a world where 11 year olds go on diets. I will try to instill in her a positive self image.  But for me – it’s just not gonna happen.  I’d like it to.  But there are a lot of things I’d like. I’d like Sarah Palin to do an Arianna Huffington, become a liberal, and use her inexplicable appeal to the masses for good instead of evil.  But that’s not going to happen either.

Maybe it’s defeatist.  Maybe I should figure out a way to love myself for who I am.  But,isn’t  that what I’m doing? Isn’t acceptance, after all, love?

I’m hopeful that this new approach to non-body acceptance will make the fact that I’ll still be unhappy with my body a non-issue. I’m hoping that it will turn out to be a road to not having that same conversation with my high school boyfriend 20 years hence.  Already, it’s liberating – like a weight has been lifted, even if no weight has been lost.

And if you don’t like my approach.  If you still think I should try to love my body, see its beauty, well, I can accept that.  And we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

A time when I was still Hip – hey I was living in Paris and working as a singer.  (OK, A Bar Mitzvah Band singer….but still.) A time when men under the age of 70 – hell, under the age of 30 – routinely checked me out and asked me out.

Yeah, like I said, that was a long, long time ago.

And it wasn’t because I was all that attractive, either.  I was just…other.  Just as we New Yorkers think that Parisian women are sophisticated and exciting, so did the French find it glamorous that I came from “zee beeg Apple.”  And just as American men find the French accent sexy…well, need I say more?

Back the, the French still LIKED us. They acted like they didn’t sometimes.  The ugly American idea was around.  But overall, they thought we were cool. (again: long time ago) Back then,  they learned much of their American culture through movies, and were convinced that New York was full of thieves, rapists, and drug fiends, but that the rest of Americans lived like characters out of 90210.  My friends were constantly asking me if I’d seen this movie star or that, and if it were true we only drank white wine.  They wanted to know if I’d seen cowboys, and were the refrigerators really that big.  Did I surf, they asked.  And once, someone even asked if it were true about the alligators in the sewer system.

The French seemed to think that I should know everything about every state in the Union.  When I tried to explain that being a New Yorker is not the same as being a Nebraskan or South Carolinian — and least of all a Californian, they looked at me in a dazed way and asked if I’d ever been to Miami.

It’s funny to me, that I was so “exotic” back then.  Because now, well, not so much.  I’m a mom, a blogging mom, kind of a cliche, in a way.  (Although Beccarama recently had a great post that I’d like to subtitle “Power to the Mommy Bloggers”)  Laundry, school buses, playdates, Gymnastics.  Not exotic.  Not at all.

That’s why sometimes I do crazy things, like Pole Dance, or Trapeze. Because even though I love my husband, I love my kids, and I love New York…I sometimes miss being that exotic creature:  The American who Spoke Fluent  French.

I miss Paris.  I’ve tried to keep part of it with me: I shop in small food boutiques.  I wander into Agnes B. now and then. I eat my salad after my entree.   But the truth is, New York is where I belong.  With my family is where I belong.

I’m looking forward to showing my daughter Paris. To introducing her to my French friends.  But even when I was there, I was still a  New Yorker.  Case in point: one time on the metro, some  man tried to stick his hand into my purse.  “Move your hand, or lose your hand,” I said in French.  You can take the New York woman out of New York.  But you can’t take the New York out of the New York woman.

The porter in our building, however, didn’t see it that way.  He could not throw it away.  First, he brought it back to our door. “You must have thrown this out by mistake,’ he said, handing it back to me. I assured him that, no, I just didn’t really want a giant blown up picture of myself.  Still, he couldn’t throw it away.  It just seemed wrong to him, he said. It was my wedding picture.  He kept it in the building’s staff room for months until one of the other doormen finally got tired of looking at me, and threw it away himself.

And now, as my parents contemplate selling their country home, and I go about cleaning out the rooms in which my children have spent every summer since they were born, (and my family has spent every summer for the past 25 years) I know just how he felt.  I don’t really WANT  four hundred and ninety-seven scribbles drawings from my twins’ second summer at the house, but somehow, it seems wrong to throw them away.

Let me first say, I am not a hoarder.  And not: I am not a hoarder in the creepy “yes I really am a hoarder I’m just so far gone that I don’t know it” way that the real hoarders on that A&E show mean it.  I’m really not.

Two or three times a year, I have my kids go through their toys and saved school work, and together, we do “keep or throw.”  We’ve gotten rid of LOTS of things that way.  And given away a lot, too. “Throw,” more often than not mean “give away.”  My wardrobe is in constant overhaul mode.  Anything I haven’t worn in two years is OUT. I regularly go through the medicine cabinet and toss anything that’s out of date. Getting rid of things is not the problem.

It’s just getting rid of these things.

There’s the pink bathing suit and coverup set my daughter wore the summer she was two.  I’ll never forget her strolling onto the patio with it on and then carefully taking off the robe, thinking for a moment, then taking off the bathing suit, and finaly heading into the bow-up kiddie pool.

I know I’ll always have the memory.  But I kinda want to have the suit, too.

Or what about the endless paintings my kids did in their summer at the Parrish Museum Art Camp.  This being The Hamptons, my then five year olds didn’t just paint, oh no, they went to visit Jackson Pollack’s house, and then went back to camp and made paintings inspired by his work. Seriously.

I can’t throw those away.

There are the “Welcome Home Daddy” signs they made, and then took to the train station, where they stood on the platform, he in his pirate costume, she in her tutu,(that’s them in the picture) waiting for Daddy to come out to country after working all week in the city.

There are finger paintings, and birdhouses, and bath toys, and doll strollers.

And it all brings back so much that I can’t bring myself to give it away.

Of course I know it’s ridiculous.  I know I can’t hold on to their babyhood forever.  But maybe, just maybe, I can hold on to the physical evidence of their babyhood just a little bit longer.  And maybe then, if I’m really lucky, they’ll stay my babies a little bit longer too.

Original Post to NYC Moms Blog.

Nancy Friedman write about momming, aging, and her 20 year quest to lose same ten pounds, at From  Hip to Housewife.

You’d think I’d be looking forward to having some time alone with my husband.  To enjoying evenings out without worrying about a babysitter. To getting to read the paper on the actual day it comes out. (Most of my news comes to me in the back seat of a cab!) To not having to say “brush your teeth, have you had a shower lately” or “how did a cream cheese sandwich end up under your bed?”

Well, I’m not doing that. Me, being me after all, well all I’m doing is bursting into tears every five minutes.

I guess I’m selfish.  I don’t want them to leave me.  My husband keeps on telling me that they’ll be fine.  I know they‘ll be fine.  They’ll be great.  I’m the one I’m worried about.  Since I have twins, they’re both leaving me at once.  And so, being me again, I start to think about when they’ll leave me emotionally – when they both start to care way more about their friends then they do about me – at the same time. I think about when they’ll leave me intellectually, when they’ll both start to think they know everything and their father and I know nothing — at the same time.  When they’ll  leave me  physically to go to college — at the same time.

At the same time – I’m happy for them.  I am. I loved camp and I know they will too.  I’m just sad for me.  Because it isn’t just that they’re leaving for camp.  It’s that they’re old enough to leave for camp.  It’s that this is just the beginning of them really, truly becoming independent and separating from me.  Which is healthy, and wonderful, and what a parent hopes their child will do.

And kind of wishes will never happen.

Of course by the time the show aired I was already married, and by the time it ended I already had two kids, but still, her life was close enough to what my reality had been – the glamorous, better dressed version of my reality – that even with its excesses, the show rang true.

But here we are, on the cusp of a new Sex and the City movie, and I can’t help but wonder….why is it that my life now centers around organizing my synagogue’s High Holy Days, cleaning up after the dog, and packing up the kids for sleepaway camp, while Carrie and the gang still have lives that include gallivanting across the desert in designer duds?

Read the rest of this post on New York City Moms blog by clicking here.

Why else would I have cut off my hair, gone Pole Dancing and and taken a trapeze class all in the last month? Yep, that’s me on the trapeze…though not me (I mean , seriously) on the pole.

I think it all started with my 7th annual 39th Birthday. You know, one birthday nearer to “closer to 50 than to 40.”  One birthday closer to “invisible to men under the age of 70.” Closer to a serious debate on whether or not to get Botox. Closer, let’s face it, to the complete demise of my face. Is it just me, or is it true that every year, the day after your birthday, you develop a new physical flaw?  The day after my fortieth, I noticed my first age spot. The day after my forty-first: two little creases between my brows.  Forty second? Wrinkly knees.

Hair cut?  It’s a wonder I didn’t shave my head like Brittany Spears.

My mid-life crisis management began simply enough, I had a (free) facial at the Dermalogica store in Soho. (Which I wrote about already. Read it here.)

My next plan was to distract myself.  So I had a party.  Or – to be more exact, Nintendo had a party that just happened to be at my house. (Full disclosure: Nintendo sponsored the party, paid for the food, the party favors, and demo-ed the Wii’s internet capabilities and relationship with Netflix.) Mind you, it wasn’t a birthday party, which only serves to remind you that you’ve aged.  It was a Wii party.  Though that comes with it’s own set of problems.

See, while in life I think of myself as relatively coordinated (as long as balls, bats, and nets are not involved), in Wii world, I have bad balance, no hand eye coordination, and would never, ever have been issued a driver’s license.  My kids, on the other hand, (who will not be issued driver’s licenses for another seven years,) cruise along the Wii highway with ease.  This makes me think that were  I younger, I would just pick up a Wii remote and win the Indy 500. My Wii incompetence is indicative of my advanced age.

But the Nintendo people knew their audience.  For the kids, they downloaded a game onto the Wii  that seemed to me to be more complicated than Health Care Reform, but that my kids instantly picked up. For the adults, they downloaded a Quiz Show type game that required  virtually NO Wii skills whatsoever!  I even won.

I felt younger already.

Still — that birthday was looming, and I needed something more drastic than cutting off my hair or treating my enlarged pores.  So I went pole dancing with a friend at  Sheila Kelley’s S Factor, because. let’s face it, nothing says sexy like a 45 year old woman swinging from a pole.

How did this happen? I’ve joined this new site called Groupon which, once a day, emails me a group coupon for something in NY (FYI: they may have the service for your city, too.). Sometimes it’s restaurants, or spas, or flowers.  But this time, it was pole dancing, and with the same “I don’t know what I was thinking” spirit in which I posed for….art photos as a gift to my husband for our tenth anniversary, I signed up.

Sheila Kelley’s S Studio in NY (they are all over the country! Go Figure!) is all about women.  Empowering women, making them feel safe and in control of their bodies and their sexuality. They take all this very seriously.  But while trying to follow my incredibly perfect-bodied instructor Barbara’s instructions to touch my “body and discover something new about it,” I found it hard not to giggle.

My body has been around for 45 years.  With the possible exception of my stomach – which has been off limits to all human contact since 1977, I’d say it’s all been discovered.  Still, I was there, so I “explored” myself.  Though, something tells me I wasn’t supposed to discover (or pay attention to) the newly acquired fleshy inner-tube around my middle, or the sudden crepe-i-ness of my arms. I was still exploring, even if I was tempted to abandon ship and mutiny against Captain Age-a-lot.

There was more to it than just self-loving in public. Pole Dancing, evidently, is an art. You have to warm up. You have to learn a particular walk. (I almost fell over — but that’s just me.) You have to writhe just so. You have to stick out your butt.  A lot. And most important: you have to be able to STOP giggling.

I did.  Mostly.  I strutted and walked and gyrated with the other mom-aged women in the class.  I did the very loosely choreographed free dance, which included rubbing myself up against a wall and then sliding down it, crawling across the floor, and standing up – butt first – from a squat position. I even learned my first pole trick: The Firefly.  But I can’t tell you what it is, because Sheila Kelley Students have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Suffice it to say that the best thing about  Pole Dancing ( I don’t know why I feel like it should be capitalized.  It just seems THAT big!) was that I got to do it in a room with no mirrors (all the studios are mirror free) so I can let myself believe I didn’t look ridiculous doing it.

Had I been able to see myself, I no doubt would have run from the room in horror.  But as it was, I felt the teeniest bit sexy, swung on the pole, and had fun. (Though the bruises on my legs lasted a week.) Would I sign up for more?  Barbara gave the sales pitch after class: if we signed up for the series we’d learn more tricks! We’d feel sexier!  We’d hang upside down from the pole!  We’d learn lap-dancing!  That was it for me — you have to LEARN how to lap dance? I needed another adventure.

Trapeze.

But to read about that, (and see more pictures) you’ll have to come back tomorrow for part 2.

The Sleek Dermatologica Store

I have often been annoyed at the fact that while I spend a fair amount of time writing this blog, I earn a whole lotta nothing for doing so. My friend from Beccarama told me that her husband says that there’s no way a whole bunch of men would be writing all of this stuff for diapers bags. They would have figured out how to make money out of this blogging thing by now. Or they would have stopped.

Occasionally, however, some little extra comes along that makes it all worthwhile. For me, that little extra was a free mini spa treatment at the slick flagship Dermalogica store in SOHO. (And that’s the full disclosure part: They invited me down, gave me a glass of water, a tour of the small but super sleek space, a mini facial, and a bag of sample size goodies from their own line.)

The reason this particular freebie made me feel like the blogging isn’t all for naught, is that it came just before my 45th birthday. (thank you, thank you. no gifts, please.) And you know what happens after 40, don’t you?  Every year the day after your birthday, you notice a new physical flaw.  The day after my fortieth, I noticed my first age spot. The day after my forty-first: two little creases between my brows.  Forty second? Wrinkly knees.

I wasn’t exactly looking forward to 45.  So anything that promised to pamper me and improve my skin at the same time was time well spent. Plus,  my little Dermalogica experience, was a mini treatment – what they call a Microzone treatment, – and it lasted only 20 minutes.  To some, that might be enough, but I’ve never been one of those people who could spa for hours on end.  I don’t want people poking and prodding me (however skillfully) for more than about — well – 20 minutes.   If you want the full hour long thing, they do that too — and in a super cool looking Pod.”" (no kidding!)  But in terms of time and lack of being poked-ness, the microzone thing rocks.

Dermalogica offers several different targeted microzone treatments (this picture to the right is where you get them. If you want privacy – it’s not for you. But it’s just your face. Get over it!):

• Flash exfoliation / resurface, smooth, brighten
• • Eye rescue / brighten, firm, revitalize
• • Lip renewal / smooth your smile
• • Blackhead relief / clear and prevent breakouts
• • Rapid spot clearing / speedy breakout recovery
• • Hand repair / heal rough hands
• • Men’s skin fitness / make shave problems history

I chose the Flash Exfoliation.  But there was no rubbing and scrubbing here.  There was a lot of talk about cell rejuvenation, and vitamin C production, and the effect of gamma rays on man in the moon marigolds. (Ok, maybe not that, but a lot of scientific skin talk that made me want to respond with one big “whaaaaa?”) And there was a lot of extremely gentle massaging with the either lightly scented or completely unscented (not unscented which really means chemically smelling, but REALLY unscented) Dermalogica products.

I remember once when I went to a Yoga retreat in upstate New York, my roommate telling me that she didn’t believe in facials. What, like they’re the tooth fairy or something?  But I sort of agreed.  It’s nice to be massaged and coddled, but does it really make a difference?  In a word: yes.  I’ve already written about my (not at all freebie related) Avon Regenerist products doing wonders for my eyes, but this facial just put me over the edge: I’m a believer.

After it was over, and for the few days since, my skin looks brighter and clearer, and just plain better.  Why, I might even say that I don’t look a day older than 44.

My friend (and prom date) Billy Kolber, from Billy Knows Best, thinks otherwise.  He’s been an Avon Man for years, (f you click over to his site, he happens to have an Avon post up right now!) and he insists that Avon spends more on product research than just about anyone, and their products are therefore more effective and better overall. Plus, they give a lot back to women and the community.  Not bad.

Anyway, because Billy really does know best a lot of the time, I decided to try out Avon’s latest best product ever (they seem to call every new product the best one ever).  It’s called Reversalist, and here’s what Avon has to say about it on their website.

“…wrinkles are a result of micro-injuries to the skin, so AVON studied how skin heals. As part of the repair process, the body produces Activin. 5 groundbreaking years in development , exhaustive research, testing & review has resulted in an unprecedented discovery by AVON scientists, how to activate this key repair molecule. Formulated with Activinol Technology to help reactivate skin’s repair process to recreate fresh skin & help dramatically reverse visible wrinkles….”

First off, may I just say: Avon people: you need a proof reader, or at least someone with minimal grammatical knowledge writing your stuff.  The little paragraph above has a few weird punctuation things, and the part of it I didn’t use has such an awful, incomprehensible  sentence in it that I’m hoping it was just an typing error.  Seriously Avon — you’re huge. Spend a few bucks for someone with a college degree.

But I digress.

Bottom line: I bit the bullet and bought the four products that are the base of the Reversalist system:  Serum, Day Cream, Night Cream, and Eye Cream, and I really do see a difference.  My skin immediately felt incredibly smooth.  Weirdly smooth.  But good.  That degree of smoothness didn’t last forever, but I think that for at least several hours after applying it, my skin has a sort of sleek feeling that I’m sure it once had, but I was too young to appreciate!

But the biggest thing is the eye cream.  The thing that’s upsetting me the most lately (skin wise, anyway) is how splotchy I’ve become. Nothing says aging hag more than a bunch of brown spots on your face. And my eyes?  I look like I’m wearing permanent brown eyeshadow….and not in a good way. After three weeks of religiously using the products, I can honestly say, the discoloration on my lids is noticeably better. (at least to me) The giant age spot on my nose?  Not so much.  But I’ll take what I can get, and brighter eyes make your whole face look younger.

As for wrinkles, I guess I can’t really say.  I’m not particularly wrinkled (finally, an upside to having oily skin and acne in my teen years!) but I do think that overall, my skin just looks and feels…better.  My neck is pretty much past redemption – but that’s what turtlenecks and scarves are for.

I do find that a lot of products work for a while, and then as your skin gets used to them, they don’t work anymore (totally unscientific, just how I think it happens).  So it’s possible that in three months, I’ll be right back where I started.  But for now: this stuff works.  Really.

When I bought it, it was a starter kit, but I had to buy full sized products.  I just checked the website, and they are selling a sample size starter kit with everything but the serum.  So why not give it a shot?  For $10 it isn’t a big risk, and you’ll get enough product to see if it works for you.

Oh, and one more thing, just to be clear:  I didn’t get ANY freebies for writing this.  I have no relationship with Avon whatsoever.  I bought everything with my money, and wanted to put in my own two cents.

Let me know if you like it — or if you have a not ridiculously expensive product that you think works.  I need all the help I can get.

Still, nothing prepared me for my recent beach-side discovery:  post-forty, bodies age exponentially.

Think about it: what was your body like at 20?  Was it so different at 25?  At 30? Probably not. As a matter of fact,  I was actually in better shape at 32 than I was at 22.  At 32 I was working out, jogging, eating right.  At 22 I was living in Paris, smoking, drinking wine, and thought exercise was something I only had to do in America, and only then when some oversized PE teacher was forcing me.

Now think of your body at 38.  Then at forty.  Then at 42. (If you haven’t reached this milestone, don’t read on: you might not want to know what’s next).  Still the same body?  Not so much, huh?

Last year, I noticed that my knees were wrinkling. Knees!! What the hell can you do about that?  This year, my quads have joined in.  Mind you, I weigh less (thank you Weight Watchers) this year than I did last,  and the muscles are still under there: yoga and Nia, and weight training, and even ballroom dancing sees to that.  But my skin doesn’t care.  My skin is aging.  Fast.

So is the rest of me.  Today, I went to Tip Top Shoes to try to find stylish shoes that don’t bother my back or my bunion. There, I said it.  BUNION.  If that doesn’t say “your body is aging” well, what does? (By the way stylkish shoes adn bunion really don’t go together. I don’t care what Mephisto says.)

Then there’s the fact that I can no longer drink alcohol.  I was never much of a drinker.  Maybe a few glasses of wine once or twice a month.  But now?  ONE glass, and I’m out of commission for three days. Jeez.

It isn’t that I don’t want to get older (well, I don’t, but that’s not the point) The point is, why is it happening so fast?  I pretty much looked the same from the time I was 20 until I was thirty.  There were little changes – maybe my skin wasn’t quite as vibrant – but overall, the changes were just a difference – not a decline.

So all this leads me to one thing:  should I change the name of my blog?  Let’s face it, agelessbodytimelessmom.com is quite a mouthful, quite a thing to type in, and awfully hard to remember, from what I gather. (Does no one get the Deepak Chopra reference?  Anyone? Anyone?)

I have been working on a manuscript for a while now, it’s called: From Hip to Housewife in Two Kids Flat.  So I’m asking here — should I change my website’s name to FromHiptoHousewife.com?  FromHip2Housewife.com?  Or just keep it as is.  Because, let’s face it, despite my best attempts, I’m not exactly ageless here.  

Votes welcome.  Vote, please, and fast.  I’m not getting any younger.