Count Down to 40 - 12 Days to Go!

How am I doing with all the goals, wishes for self improvement and long lasting peace with the aging process, you are probably not wondering? Not well. I want to be one of these beautiful girls I graduated with whom I now see on Facebook nearly everyday, celebrating a 40th birthday. You know what it feels like? It feels like that movie from the 70s - The Thirty Year Olds. Remember it? Probably not, I barely do, and only because my parents were watching it one night, and my sister and I watched it, peaking around the corner from the upstairs. We weren't supposed to be watching it, but for some reason that movie has always stuck in my head. The plot was sort of Machiavellian in that the population of where ever they were killed people off once they hit 30 years of age. I don't remember much more than that, and I tried Googling it, but all I could find was this article about how 40 year old need to buy long term care insurance. Really? You've got to be kidding me. Anyway, I just am not really digging the whole "40" thing.

Honestly, do you really, really want to know what it is? While I am all for self improvement and being a better person and all that, embracing my age, feeling the wisdom - whatever - the problem I am having is that I don't want to be fat and forty. I don't. I don't want to feel like I have one foot in the grave already, and turning 40, knowing I am half way through my life, most likely, and I wasted my 20s and 30s being fat. Yep, I am that vain. I have a beautiful family, and an amazing husband. I know, we built this family during my 20s and 30s. I used 6 years of my 20s getting through college.  I did not waste that time, really. But, I always had it in my head that I would make it up to myself (the never losing all the baby weight, compounding it, etc), by being healthy and fit, and yes, wanting to make my husband drool a little at 40. Not exactly a spiritual or mature goal, is it? So, I console myself with a bowl of cereal, or something equally carbish, at 11pm, when no one should be eating.

So there you have it, web world. I have 12 days left to become the me I want to be when I am 40. I need to pray more, I need to be more present. And I need to do more for my family, household, and my beautiful Douglas. I can get so wrapped up in what needs to be done for school, bills, phone calls, appointments, work, all that stuff. I honestly could sit at my desk all the time and never be done. There are too many days when I do exactly that. And then, to distract myself, or change the subject and end the tedium, I waste some time on Facebook. Awesome.

 Enough with the negativity, that's more annoying that anything else, right? When the day rolls around, as it surely will - there doesn't seem to be any stopping time - I hope to just pretend it isn't happening, so I can be 27 in my head, and not acknowledge the day, or the number. I hate that this is bugging me so much. It's just a number. If it were someone else whining this much about it I would tell them to get over it. If there was something they didn't like, then get off their duff and change it! I need a swift kick or two.

So, goals? Really, just acceptance, or avoidance. Either one. Deciding that it's really not a big deal would be a good place to start.