– 10 –

While watching “Moneyball,” you spend most of the movie cheering on Brad Pitt’s deep forehead wrinkles because if Brad can pull off his then clearly you’re pulling off yours.

– 9 –

When your children ask if you would take them swimming at the YMCA, your first thought is “Damn it, I’ll need to wax.” Your second thought is “Where can I buy a suit with one of those skirts attached?”

– 8 –

You spend an inordinate amount of time massaging cream on the backs of your hands because you read somewhere that you can tell a woman’s real age by the look of her hands (and not her smooth-as-ice, botoxed-forehead). Sure. You remember your grandma’s hands. Dry and bony and so NOT what’s going to happen to yours.

– 7 –

When you see a young mother struggling with her young children at the grocery store, you resist the urge to say, “You’ll look back on these years with such longing. They grow up so quickly” because you thought those women were crazy. And annoying. And clueless. Then, you say it. Because it’s SO true.

– 6 –

You’ve stopped ranting against the Kardashian sisters and Snooki because you know it’s just a matter of time before they go the way of Paris Hilton and ah, how you’ll enjoy the ensuing moments of dignified quiet. That is, until they’re replaced by the next crop of media-whoring, sorry-excuse-for-a-role-model-to-young-women ladies scrambling to grace the cover of OK! Magazine. And yes, I did just say whoring. And I meant it.

– 6 1/2 –

You use inappropriate words without remorse because you’ve seen enough bullshit to last you the next forty and some days, you just want to call a clown “a clown”and a donkey “an ass.” Even when the circus ain’t in town.

– 5 –

You panic when you enter a bookstore. So many books. So little time.

– 4 –

At the doctor’s office, you not only read the articles about 50+ year old actresses lamenting the loss of strong, sexy roles with a sense of dread and foreboding, but you find yourself slathering on more hand cream as you read.

– 3 –

You can’t stop using the expression, “That’s ’cause you know where your bread is buttered.” Not sure why. But it works. In so many contexts.

– 2 –

A day of skiing hurts at night. A bottle of wine hurts in the morning. But kisses and hugs make it all better. And 2 tablets of extra-strength Tylenol.

– 1 –

You wish everyone would stop the pity-stare when you answer, “Nothing special. Just hanging with my husband and kids. Maybe go out for dinner” to their “What big plans do you have to celebrate your 40th?” The truth is — you’re tired of planning parties for everyone and even if your husband did all the work, you know you’d nitpick about something (like how much he spent on a caterer or, if he didn’t, how the crab cakes were too bready) and you love your friends but a big party means they’ll pay through the nose for a ‘sitter and then, feel exhausted in the morning and you won’t really get any meaningful time to talk with them anyways and your family will want to fly in but you don’t have enough sofas in the house for all of them and the kids will want to stay up late but they invariably go nuclear after 9 pm and you haven’t ever bought yourself a really nice piece of jewelry and maybe that would be fun, you know, something you could give to your daughter when she’s older. Or maybe, you’d just enjoy staying in the Canyon, ordering in pizza and blowing out a mini-blaze of candles sliding off a homemade, lopsided cake? Or maybe, you don’t measure your life by dates on the calendar but rather by the long trajectory of accomplishments and struggles, memories and future dreams — and your life feels full without the party. Or maybe, you want to start a new trend of overblown parties thrown in PRIME years (43! 59!) Or maybe, you just want to spend the night lubbing up your hands, wearing a pair of those night-mitts to get the cream in good and deep, smooth and youthful.

Oh yeah. I know what I’m doing on my 40th Birthday. For sure.

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