You're HOW old?

So I was trolling the net the other day, in search of ideas for a blog post.  Or maybe its one word blogpost.  Hmmm...I'll go with that, I like it.  Blogpost.  Okay, so I found many interesting, funny and inspiring blogposts, but just couldn't think of anything to post myself.  Frustrated and just about at the point where I need to either give up and go home (or clean said home and ugh, don't wanna do that) or plagiarize from another blogger (alabastercow, I'm looking at you, or maybe grandmasbriefs?) I spy my favorite magazine More, several months worth of which are sprinkled around my cluttered home.  More magazine is filled with inspiring stories about successful, remarkable women, living remarkable lives, many of them revamping their lives after turning forty to do the things that they really love to do rather than the things they are just accustomed to doing.  I've liked More Magazine for years, since I was about 30 or so I think.  I would occasionally buy and issue, and enjoy it every time but I refused to subscribe until I was old enough, which meant forty.  The tag line for the magazine back then used to be something like " for women over forty", so even though I love the content of the magazine, I wouldn't allow myself to subscribe until I turned the dreaded four-oh.  Now that I have turned forty the magazine is "for women of style and substance" so I'm safe either way and I now have a subscription.  I've moved on from magazines like Fitness and Shape, Mademoiselle, that focus on  "perfect" bodies and fashions of twenty/thirty-somethings to mags like More and Oxygen, that are geared toward women my age.

Ugh!  That phrase "my age".  I have always been proud to say that I have never really cared much about getting older.  My best friend had a very hard time when she turned 30.  My mother always had a hard time getting older, I remember her 30th birthday as sad instead of a celebration. I couldn't have cared less even though I have always joked about having unbirthdays.  I have always said (jokingly right?) that every year I got older, was another year I got closer to the freedom of my kids turning 18 and moving out on their own (sorry kids, Mommy loves you xoxoxo).  I really didn't think it would ever be an issue for me, I have a husband that loves me, and truly, we have nine kids (yes you read that right) so as we all get older, a little peace and quiet here and there will not be unappreciated.

But then, I turned thirty-nine, forty was the next stop, and that all changed. All of a sudden I was unhappy with my age.  I was tired, unmotivated, getting gray hair and even a couple of age spots on my hands.  WTF?!!   I went out for girls night and my friend's son and his friends were there.  Twenty somethings.  One of the little bastards guessed my age and called me middle-aged.  I don't even remember why because I immediately slammed back another shot of Patron.  I surely didn't say lets play twenty-questions, how friggin old do you think I am!  Then came my fortieth birthday, which was great, my friends and family made it special, but I was still not convinced.  Being forty was not going to be fun.  Forty stole my Mojo and I was not prepared to deal with that.

But recently I've discovered that I not only don't mind being forty, I like it.  I even L-O-V-E it.  At twenty or thirty, we have so many choices, but so many things that hold us back.  What will our parents think, our friends?  We are looking for a spouse.  Our babies are little, or we are working on having a family, building a career, getting an education.   At forty, there are so many things I don't have to worry about anymore.  I don't worry about what my parents or my friends think.  I'm not building my family or my career.  I don't worry about measuring up physically to a twenty or thirty-something in a magazine.  Instead, I admire women like Tosca Reno, who at forty years old, weight in at 204lbs, and finding herself in the middle of a divorce, pulled herself up by the bootstraps and is now not only as buff as any woman can be, but totally and successfully reinvented her whole life!  I admire actresses like Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, Jamie Lee Curtis, all of whom seem to be who they are, and appear (at least to me) to have avoided all of the plastic surgery on their faces making other actresses look like scary blow up dolls. I don't worry if I have to run out to the store without make up, or even in sweats.  I have made some major life changes recently, and am in the process of reinventing myself in the professional sense, and I'm more excited about it than I am scared.  At forty, as opposed to twenty or thirty, I have the wisdom now to know that I don't have to say everything that comes to mind, but I have the courage to say it if I want to.  And the best part, I'm Grandma to some beautiful babies!  What fun!

So from now on,  when people ask me how old I am, I will proudly say FORTY! instead of  quietly with and eye-roll and dread in my voice, because really, being forty is fantastic.