In Praise of My Eyebrows

Earlier this year, I was waylaid briefly at the You Call This a Career? rest stop, then zipped uneventfully through the I'm Too Old to Have Mismatched Flatware stop.

At present, I'm stranded on Highway 40, having run out of gas somewhere between I Used to Have a Waist, and What the Hell Is Happening to My Flesh?

Nowhere do we feel the march of time more — rather, the sense of having been dragged, flopping and grunting through time's unpaved roads — than in our physical selves. Our flagging energy. Freckling skin. Failing memories. And the nonsensical number of months it takes to recover from a stinkin' sprained ankle.

I have friends who turned 40 and ran their first marathon. This, to me, is something that should be forced upon dangerous criminals, not suggested to melancholy birthday girls; haven't we suffered enough?

Still, a gal can't turn 40 without setting a goal or two.

I was recently reading I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron's hilarious essays about aging. "If anyone young is reading this," she writes, "go right this minute, put on a bikini and don't take it off until you're 34."

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