How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All?

So. On Monday, your author turns 60.



This led me to consider the ways I have celebrated birthdays of significant number in the past. On my 21st birthday, I took a final exam for my art history class and then packed my dorm room as that was the end of my college career. I was (trigger warning: Politically Incorrect Phrase Ahead) free, white, 21 and a college graduate. The universe got a good horse laugh at me and booted me off to go be an adult. I spent the next nine years having a two-year attention span and lots of adventures. Then I turned 30 and felt I needed to Get Serious.



I straightened up and married a criminal defense attorney, proving that clean and sober was a bad lifestyle choice for me. I remedied that and dumped the lawyer, quit graduate school and several jobs in quick succession and took up with the Renowned Local Artist, moved to New Mexico and back to Miami (another set of 2-year attention spans, I guess) and dug in at the next job, lasting through my 40s and all the way to 50. For my 40th birthday, a friend built me a giant 4-0 out of straw and we burned it in effigy. It was brilliant. We were pulling ashes out of the pool filter for years.



My fiftieth year was rather horrid: lost my cat, lost my father, lost my mother to Alzheimer's, my sister-in-law lost her mother, George Bush "won" a second term, I lost my job, I had to move my mother to a facility near me, and I turned 50. There was only one thing to do: I went to White Party in full mermaid drag. Take that, universe. And I bought myself a puppy.



This year, I am taking the day off from packing the pod (not a euphemism for anything) and heading over to the day spa for a four-handed massage (ooh, just like a three-way, but with no sex! I said to the booker), a facial and a mani-pedi. I mentioned that this was a birthday present to myself for turning the big digits, and she asked if I wanted a little color touch up. I explained that my hair, on its best days, looks like Roger Daltry/Isle of Wight/1971 and she told me that she had to Google that. Then I told her that the color I wanted was a full ombre in turquoise or purple or something, as the combination of magenta and that hair would make me look like an escapee from clown college. The booker told me that she was very sorry that she would be off Monday, as she expressed an interest in meeting me, but swore that they would take before and after photos. I'm sure they will.


Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/12 at 11:26 AM in The Third Act


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