Wow... I'm 30. How'd that happen?
The past few days I've been distracted with getting older. This is really getting in the way of concentrating on various day to day things in my life. For whatever reason, I just can't fathom how I got here. 30, 3-0, thirty, 3 tens, 15 times 2... whatever, it's 30. I'm 30.
When I was 15, thirty was middle-aged and forty was OLD. I was thinking about that yesterday when I left work. There are some things that I have naturally let go of being a full-time, working, married mother of two small boys. I don't have the time for myself like I used to. Not that I was ever very prissy to begin with. Brett describes me as a 'jeans & hoodie girl', which is true, but sometimes I do like to get dolled up and pretend I'm a high maintenance woman. So, in a fit of terror that my 15-year-old self now considers me "middle-aged" I went off the deep end and dyed my hair last night. I used to do this all the time. From 16 years old until Ryan was born, my natural hair color was never known. Up until last night, I had dishwater brown hair. Last night I went 'dark mahogany brown'. Tonight I'll add some auburn streaks maybe. Whoa chick... slow down! You're living on the edge! Middle-aged my ass... take THAT hair!
Next on the list?
* New work out plan... I certainly can't be 'Dirty 30' with excess flab hanging from my stomach and rear end. I'm going an all-girls vaca this weekend to Charleston with the ladies of my family. Monday will be the start of my re-introduction of P90x, which I started about 2 months ago, but abruptly quit for no real reason other than laziness.
* Diet... not that I need to lose weight, I just need to tone up, but my eating habits need to change. I WILL NOT fall victim to the old-age metabolism monster. I've heard about it all my life. One day my metabolism will just disappear and it will be gone forever. I'm not playing that game. Changing my diet will go hand-in-hand with my new work out plan. While I'm at it, maybe I'll sign up for a triathlon. Take that 30!
* Laugh lines... I have parenthesis on my face and I don't like it. They have to go. Since I'm middle-aged, I'll surrender to the middle-aged creams and potions that promise to keep a youthful face. It will be like a science experiment! Ahhh... high school all over again!
* Underwear over haul... My underwear must suggest that I'm 'dirty 30' not 'new mommy'. Dirty in the turn-my-husband-on sense, not the I-haven't-bathed-in-2-days sense. My children are not infants, we're passed the stage of forgetting to take a shower because I'm tending to the baby.
* Boobs... Yeah, I'm getting them. I've gone long enough without them. I am a woman. My boys will probably be boob men since each of them stole mine from me. I am taking control back and buying me a set. Nothing over the top, but I have a consultation next week... we'll see what the doc says.
Pardon me, I'm going to get mushy for a minute... Looking back, I think about ALL the things I did in my twenties; amazing events, once in a lifetime experiences, trying times, devastating events, pure happiness, shock, joy, all of it. I've experienced and accomplished a tremendous amount of things and crossed many items off my life's to-do list. They've all had some way of molding me and changing me for the good and the bad. In retrospect, there are only a few things I might would change, but for the most part, I'm proud of my twenties. My teens? Well, I'm proud of those too. Proud that I was a level headed kid for the most part, only making "small" mistakes. Small in the sense that none of them were massively life-changing choices. However, some may have been borderline. I was never arrested, never fell to recreational drugs, never got pregnant, and made decent grades in school. I was going to share some of my teenage antics, but my children may read this one day, and I certainly don't want them to get any ideas. I'll keep my mouth shut.
So there... I'm trying very hard to embrace this 30 thing. I may not be the best at aging gracefully, but I'm only on day 1. Hopefully I have many more days to work on it. Practice makes perfect.
