Trouble Spots

Today is Philip's 40th birthday. I keep asking him if he's going to sell our kid to get a red sports car and a nubile blond girlfriend with giant fake boobs. While I am obviously joking, I'm not really because these are the classic things men acquire in their mid-life awakening. What separates men like that from mine?

So then I was walking through the hazelnut orchard feeling kind of depressed because I recently saw some pictures of old friends who are only slightly less close to forty than I am and look about twenty. Then I was feeling my face, like I do sometimes suddenly when I realize I'm a person in a body that's currently in motion and it surprises me every time. I feel the way I'm wearing my face, which I normally don't and there it is: me frowning. I've been doing it my whole life. The only difference between my look of deep serious concentration between now and when I was a kid is that I no longer allow my tongue to hang out like a cartoon kid.

Max asks me all the time "How come you're so mad mama?" and I come out of whatever hole my thoughts have been accumulating in and with surprise say "But I'm not mad at all Max! Why would you think I'm mad?" And he points out that it was my mad expression that gave me away. I tell him how I don't realize I'm frowning and I try not to but it's just the face I wear when I'm not thinking about what face I should be wearing. He informs me that I should change that face. So true.

So this face above is one of my serious faces that I constantly wear. The other one I got pictures of but they made me look much worse than I really look and if I really look that way I hardly want to acknowledge it so this one will do. Then I had fun in photoshop using tools I have no inkling how to use well and pointed out why I'm not supposed to be wearing this face.

I'm not actually concerned with the wrinkles much. What DOES concern me quite a lot is the sudden development of a couple of dark mustache hairs. I have never in my life had a dark mustache hair in spite of being liberally covered in dark-ish hair everywhere else. What's up with that? Thank god they aren't stiff and wiry like my chin hairs which could seriously put someone in critical condition if I didn't stay on top of plucking them!

Philip says he's not worried about being forty years old. This is why I married him. I'm not really worried about turning forty either. I turn thirty nine in a little less than a month and that doesn't phase me any more than turning thirty did which was not at all.

I have a resolution for the new year that I don't think I'm going to tell anyone about.

I do hate my hair again. Having bad hair is much worse than having wrinkles. You can quote me on that if you want.

Well, I better go do some cooking and preparing for the kid to get home. We're going to go celebrate at Hotel Oregon. Where there will hopefully be no carolers. It's hard to get up when I have a sweet cat purring in my lap.

I'm feeling frustrated with my photography efforts. All of a sudden I can't seem to take any sharply focused pictures. I really want to be a better photographer. Taking good pictures is so satisfying that once you've taken one or two it makes all the mediocre ones intolerable.

Oh well.

I'll be posting again today so I better stop playing around here. Hope you're all having a great Thursday.


Happy Birthday Philip!!!!