With a friend like me, who needs enemas?

I'm tired.
Really, right now, that's all I have to say. I'm. Just. Tired.
Sleeping on an ancient futon with a dachshund crammed against the backs of your knees all night because the daughter is in your bed with the husband because the Dane went all passive-aggressive and peed on the daughter's bed will do that.
Buuuuut, I'm trying to get all warmed up. For what? For the writing! Yes! I'm going to write today! Yep! Gonna do it! Nothing's going to stop me! Two pages of a scary-if-slightly-odd Halloween story. Yep. Here I go...
What else is on my mind now? Hmmmm...

I think people are sick of me. Or my grandmother is indeed haunting me with her paranoid bullshit and I'm channelling it. Talk about p-a, Oy,vey, the woman was crazy. But more about me, since this is about me.
I was an obnoxious child. I insisted everything be my way, I was loud, I lied a bit to make myself seem important. I would spend days playing or reading alone, telling my friends I didn't want to play; then I'd be pissed and lonely when I was done wanting to be alone and my friends had moved on and weren't ringing my doorbell to play every day (this was back in the Olden Days before kids had to text each other to say anything, even from across the room).
I'm pretty sure things haven't changed much. I go through phases of just needing to be left the hell alone, not wanting to talk to anyone, biting heads every time someone in my family speaks to me. These phases last anywhere from a week to several months. I don't text anyone, don't invite anyone over, don't write nice letters or emails asking "Hey! How've you been?" Because I just don't care. Isn't that awful? I want to care, I want to be that person to whom everyone runs and commiserates and asks advice. And sometimes I am. People really open up to me once I get them talking. But then, they don't stop talking. And it's the same bullshit over and over and over and I really just want to stop saying "Oh, that's too bad but it'll get better" and tell them to shut the hell up, get over themselves, look around at their problems and see that they are the common denominator.
But that's not what a friend does, right? So instead I just do a slow fade. And they eventually stop calling me. And most of the time, I don't talk to anyone because I really don't feel like I have much to say on any given day. Yes, Grace is getting big. No, my book isn't done. Yep, still have 2 dogs. Blah blah, who cares? And then when I need someone, no one is there. And I convince myself that no one wants to hear my whiney bitch-fest bull anyway. Then I get insecure and depressed because my phone is not chirping and the only things coming into my inbox are healthy recipes and messages from a Nigerian prince. (I must have had too much fun in Tahoe this year, because I don't even remember meeting a Nigerian prince).
Anyway. At the moment, I'm coming out of my solitary mood and miss my friends. But I'm not sure what to do about it. Maybe I'll take an unprecedented step and just email 3 people today and ask them what's up. And try to care.

Ok. Enough indulgence and delving into the Neuroticism of Me. Writing now. Haunted-dead-baby story, here I come!

Now I understand, oh Master.

I've always listened to older women bitch. Bitch about their sagging boobs, the wrinkles that appear overnight, the saddlebags and expanding waistline, the sudden onset of invisibility around the opposite sex. I laughed it off. (Not to their faces, of course, I might be a socially-retarded bitch but I'm not cruel.) I was able to disregard their whining because I was young. I had a fairly nice body, my face and ass smooth, I could generally count on getting at least one "eye-contact" moment in a day. And my husband is hawt. So, yeah; I was one of those smug asshole women who probably think they're better looking than they actually are.
Hey, then I turned 37. And as some saying or other goes: the bottom dropped out of the market.
I have boobs that I can feel on my stomach when braless.
I have happy little waves of skin and that shall-remain-nameless subcutaneous substance cascading over my bra strap, the top of my pants, and oh dear lord, my jaw.
My waist is now inverse.
The folds of skin on my eyelids could now safely smuggle in a Mexican.
I swear men were purposefully looking away if I looked in their direction at the gym today. I was less than invisible; I am avoid-at-all-costs.

Now let's get something straight, before you click away in a huff thinking I'm one self-centered snotty cougar-wanna-be whose deep end couldn't drown a toothpick. I've never considered myself all that. I very realistically would put myself squarely at the "barely average" mark. My husband is an incredibly handsome man (and I am eternally grateful that he has no idea of it) and I am faithful to him. Yup. 101 percent. My number one concern on a minute-by-minute basis is the health and well-being of my daughter.
And I have been totally content with who I am, what I look like (other than the giant schnoz I got from my dad), my past history of feeling attractive. Really. I embrace much more important, profound, serious philosophies of life than whether I could still get laid by a 26-year-old swim-shop manager from South Africa.
But I do wonder about it. If I still could, I mean. But there's a sensible, grounded bit of me that knows that I really need to stop worrying about it. Right? There's nothing to be done, anyway. In ten years I'll look at photos of myself now and wonder what the hell I was complaining about. Will wish for the waist I don't have currently.

We all age; we all sag and get confused and leave the ones we love. Maybe I'm not really as shallow as all that. My hope is that I can age gracefully, stay healthy (K, gotta get healthy first), learn something everyday, make sure those I love are safe and happy.
Or, drink more martinis, get a shitpot of plastic surgery and botox, keep wearing inappropriately low-and-high-cut clothing, and someday strive to be voted "Sluttiest Senior" at the nursing home.
Yeah.
I'm hawt.