2005-09-07 - 8:25 p.m.

September 6, 2005

So, PJammer asked, for his 32nd birthday, that you tell him about something good that happened when you were 32 (or something you wished you'd done, or something you hope you'll have accomplished by then if you're not 32 yet). So I went back and looked in my journal for the major happenings and was extremely amused to turn up this paragraph, written in the winter of 2003/2004:

"Another type of accessory I've completely ignored up until this point is bags. A lot of women tend to get really excited about bags. I can't quite get into that. I like how nifty bags look, but I get very irritated with constantly moving my stuff from one bag to another (and this is just when I switch from my black bag to my brown bag and back). I'm not sure how to deal with this. When I get the hang of the scarves, I'll think about bags. I do go out a lot these days with nothing but a wallet and some lipstick, so perhaps changing bags to complement my outfits is in my future."

Gee, ya think?

As I said to Poindexter, "Is there ANYTHING non-fundamental about me where I haven't done a complete 180?" I mean, this is getting ridiculous. I think that if you were to take the adjectives that people use to describe my personality now, they would apply just as readily to the me of 15 years ago (introspective, painfully honest, enthusiastic, stuff like that). But if you started talking about things like food, exercise, clothing, stuff like that, I would be my complete opposite to anyone who knew me during my first year at college.

Let's review. At age 18, exactly 15 years ago, you would have observed the following things about me:

- Hates to exercise, and sits like a slug while her hallmates exercise together and go to aerobics classes
- Has only a vague sense of what's fashionable; lives in jeans, tees, and flannel shirts
- Eats a hotdog and french fries every day for lunch; only fruits/vegetables eaten (besides potatoes) are iceberg lettuce and apples. Always orders a hamburger or chicken fingers in restaurants. Maybe Mexican food.
- Dreams of having a home in the country
- Thinks firearms are bad and scary and nobody should have one
- Figures she'll have kids at some point

Now the Evelynne of today:

- Walks at least a mile every day, enjoys low-impact aerobics and inline skating
- Devours fashion magazines, reading them a minimum of three times, and goes shopping (or "scouting", since I look more than I buy) at least once a week
- Has discovered broccoli, beans, raw spinach, sweet bell peppers, and a plethora of other vegetables. Enjoys flavorful low-fat cooking. Will eat absolutely any kind of cuisine.
- Lives in Center City Philadelphia and cannot imagine living anywhere else. Well, at least not for very long.
- Owns a firearm, plans to buy more, is a staunch gun-rights advocate
- Is 97% certain kids are not in the picture

It's just bizarre to me that I could have done so many flip-flops on so many things. The only thing I can figure is that it just took me a while to figure out what was right for me. With the exercise, I finally figured out that I hate high-impact exercise (jogging, running, high-impact aerobics, etc.), not exercise per se. I figured out that I don't like canned or mushy vegetables; I like 'em fresh and crisp-tender, and preferably with spices or a sauce on 'em. I discovered city living when I fell into it by accident; my "living in the country" idea was probably based on the fact that I didn't like the suburbs but had never experienced the positives of city living. The gun thing and the kid thing were just default assumptions; once I sat down and actually thought about them, I changed my mind. Still, it makes me wonder where I'm going to be in another 15 years.

Before I forget:

I think I've mentioned that part of my fashion-freakness involves scoping every woman I see to check out what she's wearing and how she puts stuff together. It's all part of my fashion education, learning about different types of clothing and how to accessorize.

Today on the way back from dropping Poindexter at work, I saw a tall curvy chick on the crosswalk half a block ahead of me. She was wearing pants in what seemed like brown herringbone (which makes me squee, of course, since it's a form of tweed) from a distance, and a fitted v-neck three-quarter-sleeve top in chocolate brown. As I approached the intersection, I was admiring the outfit and how well she filled it out, and then my gaze made it up to her face and I suddenly realized who I was looking at. It was LJer CamilleOphelia. :)

So I pulled over and hollered, and offered her a ride partway to work. How often do you get to pick up a hot chick on the way to work, huh?

September 7, 2005

[I wrote this in bits yesterday and today, and I really think I am tired of it and don't care anymore. Or I have resolved it in my head and made peace with it for the time being. I considered not posting it, but I figured if any of you out there have gone through something similar I'd like to hear about it, so I'll post it.]

I am going to write down a few more thoughts on the getting-old/sagging business and then I am going to take everyone's advice and just stop thinking about it. My body not look like I did when I was 25, but overall I'm still happy with how it looks, Poindexter still can't keep his hands off me, and I can't stop the aging process, so I'm just gonna continue to enjoy it while it lasts and take a few measures to keep it toned where I can.

But first I'm going to indulge myself with a whine.

Now before I get into this I want to put in a few disclaimers: I know that I have been genetically blessed. I am very lucky to be naturally thin with curves in the right places. Just because I say I don't like a particular part doesn't mean I'm not happy with the overall package, and it DEFINITELY doesn't mean that I can't accept that other people (most importantly Poindexter) think I am gorgeous or perfect. There are times I'll see myself in the mirror and go "ugh" and Poindexter will be looking goopily at me and say, "Gorgeous girl", not to mention I see gorgeous women complaining about how ugly and/or fat they are, so I know damn well that other people see me completely differently than I see myself. As a result, I generally don't take my own opinion of myself very seriously. I place a lot more credibility on people who like how I look, and don't worry much about the ones who don't (they're entitled). And in general I do not dwell on the things about me that I don't like, preferring instead to focus on what I do like. But I'm allowing myself a period of whining here, remember, OK?

Poindexter is just under two years older than me. Sometime in the past few years, maybe after he turned 31 and moaned that he was "IN my THIRTIES", Poindexter has been bitching about being old. "I'm old," he'll say, with a pained look on his face. These complaints often came the day after dirt biking when he hadn't been in a while, so I dismissed his complaints, saying, "You're not old, you're out of dirt-biking shape." I was right about that -- after dirt-biking every Friday all last fall, the muscle soreness went away -- but he still complained sometimes about being old. And I didn't get it. I thought he was just focusing on a number and being ridiculous, so I'd just tell him he was a still a total hottie and to shut up.

But then in the last couple of months, I started noticing mild soreness in my joints (primarily my elbows, wrists, and fingers) that I've never noticed before. Our bed at home started getting REALLY uncomfortable (it was ten years old and a cheap mattress to begin with, but it seemed to get much worse all of a sudden). It was pretty mild, but I'd never had such pains before. Then I kept waking up with back pain after sleeping on the bed on the boat at my in-law's, a bed I've never had trouble with before.

I've been feeling better since returning from vacation, so I really wonder if I didn't just aggravate various parts during dirt biking in July that took some time to heal. I am dealing with much more challenging terrain than I ever used to, which requires more upper-body strength than I have (which is why I am trying to remember to do pushups ... ugh). My favorite type of terrain (narrow twisty paths through trees) is also the type that requires the most upper-body work, to keep from riding into a tree. I tend to get pain in my hands and wrists from gripping the handlebars too hard, and I remember noticing a couple of times that the bike jerked ahead (sometimes I would accidentally pull on the throttle when I was trying just to hold onto the handlebars) and nearly pulled my arms out of their sockets, which could have pulled something that didn't want to be pulled and left some minor residual pain that'll take a while to go away. All the pain I've been having has been in my upper body, which is admittedly weak, while my lower body is fine, probably thanks to all the walking and going up and down the stairs 20 times a day. Those stairs are a godsend, the way they force me to do weight-bearing exercise -- I hope I never have to live in anything but a rowhouse/townhouse.

But I suspect that some of it, at least, is just that I am getting old. Parts are wearing out. Stiffness is setting in. The stiffness is part of the reason why dirt biking causes pain in the first place. Which is why I decided over vacation to take up yoga, in an attempt to regain a little flexibility before it's too late. I think that the generalized stiffness is the main reason why I was having trouble with the boat's bed.

I was discussing these aches and pains with Poindexter at the dinner table while we were on vacation, and bitching about getting old. My papa-in-law (who has 30 years on me) was aghast, telling me I was SO YOUNG and what the heck did I have to complain about, etc. And my answer was this: Up until now, I was in some kind of denial about getting old. Finding out that my body is now on the downhill slope since I stopped growing is a RUDE SHOCK. I went through the fear-of-death phase in my late 20s, and I'm always worried about getting some weird disease and dying, but somehow I never really thought much about the being-old part, about getting stiff, about having weird aches and pains that come and go, about feeling stiffness in my joints. I felt just fine right up until fairly recently, so to suddenly notice this happening has been a rude awakening for me. And now I am going through a period where I am dealing with the shock and rearranging my mindset to accept the fact that I'm now the human equivalent of a used car, who rattles a bit and needs repairs occasionally. Once I do, I'll be OK, but in the meantime my mindset is along the lines of "how can this be happening?!" Like I said, I've been in denial.

And then there is the sagging bit. We were talking about pains at the dinner table, so Papa's comment about "maybe it's a curse of beauty" never got explored, but I thought a lot about that later. While it's not a curse, I think the loss of youthful beauty is just that: a loss. If you are considered beautiful (either by yourself, other people, or both), losing that beauty and the perks that go with it is a loss. It's a loss of an aesthetic view that may have brought you pleasure, like somebody chopping down a tree you really liked looking at and leaving behind a dead stump. (Remember, when I look in the mirror, I don't see the way my sense of life makes me beautiful to people; I only see a two-dimensional frozen picture.) And it's also a loss of a certain type of attention that is enjoyable. Most of the time I'm oblivious, much to Poindexter's amusement, but sometimes I do see how men's gazes will flit towards me and then stay for a while, and that is NICE. I like it. I appreciate it. When that stops happening, I am going to miss it for a while until I get used to it. Fortunately, I have never relied on being attractive to make my way in the world and I have a short memory, so eventually I will forget what it was like to get this kind of attention, and I will become one of those old ladies who uses the excuse of age to be loud, direct, rude, and to boss people around.

But back to the whining.

I have always been very happy with my figure. I less likely to be happy with my face; I wish it was rounder and I had a bigger mouth, so I use Poindexter as my mirror. If he says I am gorgeous, I must be. But from the neck down I've always been just delighted with what my parents' genes blessed me with. And with that youthful "immortality" mindset, I always took it for granted.

I've been OK with the gradual loss of youthfulness in my facial features -- my parents both look pretty young for their ages, especially my dad, whom I take after most. And then there's the fact that I like laugh lines, and that facial expressiveness is so important to me that I think women look much more beautiful with a faceful of wrinkles than they do post-botox or post-facelift. So I am not too worried about my face. And if my father, his mother, and her mother are any indication, I should remain thin as long as I remain active.

But then there is the saggy-skin thing. This just depresses me. I have always been "perky" in the front and in back, and of everything that's going to happen to me aging-wise, the loss of perk bothers me the most. I'm still holding up well in the front, perhaps because my boobies are physically smaller than they appear to be on my small frame (I think they're bigger than baseballs but slightly smaller than softballs). But as I whined about a few posts ago, I suspect that the skin on my ass may not be quite as perky as it used to be. But even if it isn't, even if right now it's still as perky as ever, the sad fact is that eventually it's going to head south, and I'm not looking forward to it. It sucks. It pisses me off. It makes me sad. It just DOES. Eventually I will get over all this and adjust to the new reality, but right now I DON'T LIKE IT.

It's particularly annoying to have this start to happen just when I was beginning to really revel in my hot-chick-ness. Until Poindexter started telling me all the time that I was hot, pointing out the men checking me out, and got some friends who are quite open in their appreciation of my aesthetics, I didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to my looks other than fussing over my hair. Then when I started to see other people appreciating them, I started to really enjoy that. Like I said, I'm going to miss it.

Well. I think I'm officially sick of myself on this topic, so I'll shut up now.

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