:Naiahdot

Partaking of the bizzarity that is AJ.

So many of my friends who struggle with weight/body/beauty issues have been subjected at one point or another to my various rants including, but not limited to, “it’s just geometry” and “the injustice of one ideal of beauty” in my slightly clumsy, over-intellectualized attempts to cheer them up. I find myself now, for the first time having to batter on those same fronts within myself.

I am changing physically in significant measure for the fist time since puberty. Even as recently as one year ago, I was regularly (and annoyingly) mistaken for someone half my age. In the last year, though, I see my skin, my teeth, and yes, even bits of my body south of the neck here and there changing. It’s happening so fast, as if all the years that forgot me suddenly picked me up on their radar and are working overtime to catch up.

No one who met me face-to-face today could come anywhere near mistaking me for a teenybopper. Crows’ feet have begun to crawl out subtly from my eyes, and my smile is highlighted with a smattering of laugh lines. Three fairly noticeable lines trace the graceful curve of my high forehead (a sign of intelligence, according to my grandmother), and my worrisome nature is, at last, permanently etched on my face for all to see, regardless of my mood, in the crease between my eyebrows that used to only show when I furrowed my brow (which was often, mind you).

I do not mind these new strokes on my self-portrait; in fact, I kind of like them. Even so, for the first time ever, I find myself taking face cream seriously. Yeah, seriously; I mean it’s ok to celebrate my wrinkles and the new stage of life they represent, but, c’mon, like all things–let’s take it in moderation, please! L’oréal ads with Andie McDowell & Claudia Schiffer are catching my eye and getting more than their usual passing glance. (i.e. from “Man, she is STILL so beautiful!” to “Collagen? Hmm, oh, it fills in the line, and the moisturizers soak in an repair it from the inside… Cool; I might have to try that”)

I am the mamma, and I finally look like it. What’s more interesting is that I feel like it, too. So much of my wardrobe in recent years has consisted of sexy little tops and low-slung too-tight jeans. I’m finding the changes in my face reflected in my inner self and my taste. I look at my wardrobe, and it just looks silly to me. I feel like I’m trying to wear kids’ clothes. I even catch myself asking “can I pull this off?” You know it’s time for a change when…

So many of the clothes that I cast aside when I broke with the church and its accompanying culture years ago, I am picking back up, and they are becoming my favorites. I can’t deny that, on some level, it’s a relief. I’ve never been anything close to high maintenance, but now that it’s gone, I’m realizing just how much pressure I was putting on myself each day to come up with something ‘hot’ or ‘sweet’ or ‘sexy’.

Yesterday I wore a pair of jeans and my recently reclaimed favorite corduroy button-down (burgundy with small hunter/khaki/goldenrod flowers) and plain, tan t-shirt underneath. Yeah, pretty generically suburban in it’s description, but this is me. I may follow the same guidelines, but I’ll always have my own little flair. I can’t help it; boring just doesn’t sit well on me. It never has. I used to hate that as a kid. As each new school year started, I’d just pray “Please, let me become NORMAL.”

I don’t know if I’ll ever be anything approaching normal. I’m actually pretty sure I won’t, but the older I get, the more I like myself, and the less my desire to be anything else. And, yeah, not only am I just as pretty in corduroy button-downs as I am in little lacy getups, I’m even prettier. No doubt. Just ask my husband, who, for all that he gets less of an ‘eyeful’ these days, is loving the change, too.

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Click it, but beware–Geekbaby cuteness alert in effect

My son wants a laptop. He is 2. Yes, 2. He is not 4, but he wants you to think that he is. He was born 4th of July 2003. So, he is 2. He is also a geekbaby. He was so dubbed by Heather yesterday upon his instant abandoning of library storytime wherein, upon noticing the row of PCs at the end of the room, he shouted full-voice “COMPUTERS!” and ran from the group and promptly parked himself at one of the stations. “He’s a little geekbaby,” she said “It’s not that surprising looking at his parents.” Ok, ok, so his dad is a wicked-hot dev for Microsoft, and his mom is a lifelong (well, since she was 8 ) Mac user & blogette précieuse. All right; some of it might rub off a little.

So, now, as of this morning he’s taken it a step further. Bobbie now maintains that he wants a laptop. Vehemently. He also still maintains that he is 4. He is not.

Vlog 4: Geekbaby, 15 sec’s

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Kickin’ it (‘it’ being the flu) in bed.

I have a peeve. It’s a big peeve. Really big, and it got stepped on this afternoon in a new way. That peeve is the usage of a quotation out of context–when the context would reverse the meaning. The two quotations that I run into the most on this score, which are usually directed at my children, are both from Hamlet. Yeah, Hamlet. You know–the play where the uncle kills the father and marries the mother and the father’s ghost appears to the son to convince him to kill the uncle-step-dad and the son inadvertently drives the love of his life out of her head and she kills herself and his mom accidentally gets killed and he dies and the uncle-step-father-dies oh and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die, too. Yeah, that one. Not exactly cheery material, eh? Well, fact is that most people don’t seem to know the quotations’ origin, and are usually surprised and sorry when I point it out.

The first is usually directed at Katy when she has just been given something. Mind you, Katy delights in presents, even of something as mundane as an old notebook no longer needed. She lights up, visibly, which in turn lights up the giver who will usually say, “Sweets to the sweet!” There’s always a little tone of adoring delight in their voice when they say it, and I cannot help but cringe, “Don’t you know where that’s from?!?!” It’s Hamlet’s mother tossing flowers in to the grave of Ophelia who has just drowned herself after being driven mad by Hamlet’s toyings with her. Ugh. No thanks. My daughter is neither dead, nor suicidal.

The second, apparently in the spirit of being fairly unfair, is directed at Bobbie. You see, my son is a champion napper. He LOVES his bed. There’s no standing there rocking him for hours, or luring him with various devious parental tricks. He just crawls into bed, and asks for some milk, and goes to sleep. Babysitters, friends, and family alike are all consistently amazed at this aberration of two-year-old behavior. An uncanny 90% of them all manage to utter the same ill-derived words upon viewing this for the first time- – “Good night, sweet prince.” Excuse me, but Aaaaaaargh, NO! That line belongs to Horatio, in the final scene, just after Hamlet dies. No death plots gone awry; it’s just a nap.

This afternoon, my husband busted out with a new one, not from Hamlet, but equally disturbing. In an attempt to get Katy to back off from smothering her brother and let him go his own way, Rob busted out with “Katy, you are not your brother’s keeper!” I looked at him, and just said, “NOOOOO!” He came back with, “What?! I thought it was appropriate,” (given my recent return to church). “Don’t you know where that’s from?” (Standard line in these situations.) “Uhhh.” “CAIN and ABEL!!!” “Ooops.”

It’s not Hamlet, but man, I wouldn’t exactly call that section of the Old Testament very fun, either. If I find one of the kids wearing the sheepskin rug from the living room floor and babbling something about birthrights, I am *so* blaming Rob. Ok, *shakes it off*

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