Maturity

Hi Blog!  I hope you were okay yesterday without me.  You seem alright.  It's nice to give each other some space every now and then.

Here's the thing.  I am almost not thirty.  I have no idea how it happened but it is like one year just kept coming after another and all of a sudden, I am like the age of people I used to think were old people. Which is fine, really, because the alternative is somewhere between Peter Pan and Dorian Grey and I am pretty sure those dudes need serious counseling. Group therapy could be helpful there. Peter (arms crossed):  I won't grow up!  Dorian (pinky lifted): Can you pass the anisette?

But Blog, as you know, I like to try to exercise.  Which is more about wanting to live longer than trying to look good.  I mean, yes, I would prefer it, if when I put on a bathing suit, I don't traumatize the neighborhood children and become the folklore for campfire stories.  But at the end of the day, I just try to shake what my mama gave me, and accept myself.  (BTW, thanks mama for all my shakeable parts).  This stretch mark is here because Helen is alive. The two wrinkles around my mouth (a new addition this year) were inherited from my grandmother, which is awesome.   I am no longer trying to be the prettiest girl in the room and it's relaxing.  I can pass that torch to my little ones, who are beautiful and look absolutely nothing like me.

It's not really about "letting yourself go" (ugh what a horrible expression), but what I like to think of as maturity.  At least this is what I tell myself when I entered a Kmart in nothing but a maternity bathing suit and flip flops with my daughter in hand sporting a snorkel mask and inner tube.  I am all, where is the calamine lotion?  I am pretty sure I had only put make up on one eye. It's Kmart, if I see anyone in there dressed in Dolce and Gabana, I'm pretty sure the natives are on my side.

And if you've piled on the pounds since grade school?  So what.   I will hug you until you get so fat my arms can't reach, and then I will get a yoga strap and hug you some more.