Now that I’ve had one melanoma scare (it was removed), I am on the look-out for suspicious-looking anything. I buy sun shirts but have yet to wear them. I no longer eat lunch on my chaise lounge, legs in the sun.
So, when I found the mole on my neck, which has always been there, but now it is bigger, and lumpy, and OMG, hairy, I had to admit that my beauty days are over. A scar on my leg and a witch’s mole have taken me beyond my prime. I look back at my fifties and think, Wow, I looked good.
Now I’m crossing over on this next birthday to closer to 70 than to 60 and think, what happened?
For one thing, the pandemic happened. I spent a year reading books, purging every nook and cranny of my houses (people really should go through their stuff once a decade) and writing.
No, I haven’t sold a thing, writing-wise.
As for purging, I spread out the love between several thrift stores in three different counties. But then, my ex announced to our three kids that he was selling his house, moving out of state, and that they needed to come get their stuff. All that space I’d made in garages is now replaced with offspring stuff. None of them has a house yet or is any way settled into adulthood, housewise.
Buying a house now is not what it used to be. I bought my first house at 28 years of age in Omaha, where you could get 700 sq feet plus a basement for under $30K. Impossible today.
It’s a great time to sell your house, but then you have to leave California to find anything cheaper. I am hanging in here, mostly because I can’t imagine living anywhere else. The weather is outstanding, the hiking and biking trails, the ocean, the mountains, the greatest National Park ever (Yosemite), and the diversity and cultures that come with it.
But then there’s the traffic, the violence, the high taxes, the long lines.
Wow, how did I get from hairy moles to here? This is the point in a person’s life when you have to decide how you will spend the rest of your days. Return to your home state? Move to Mexico? Move to a tiny island near Seattle? I know four guys who have done those three things. The women I know aren’t being so drastic. They are sticking around here, maybe changing their living situations, but not leaving the state. They have girlfriends here, important to have that social network and support.
My girlfriends will still love me, hairy mole or not, scar on my leg or not. Missing molar or not. Next to me, they’ll look pretty good!
I just did a high-maintenance test on Facebook. You get twenty points (against you) if you own more than 20 scarves. I need those scarves nowadays to cover up my hairy mole. After taking the twenty shoes penalty, it got me to donate some sandals that I will never wear again.
It’s not that we want to be high maintenance. It’s just that getting old is hard, and we need all the shoes, scarves, make-up, massages, and jewelry that we can get, to distract others from the moles, scars, missing teeth, lack of tan and abundance of cellulite.
This is why old ladies wear purple and join the Red Hat Society.
Somebody gave me that book at 50.
Fifty? I was still hot.
Sixty-six? Not so much.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 