Twenty-Nine

I turned 29 today. Okay, I guess I don't turn 29 for another hour and a half or something, but really, technicalities, people.

So, 29 is the age that a lot of people, especially women, choose not to leave. I believe my grandmother was still "29 again" when my dad was well into his forties. He was one of those rare fertilized-egg-in-egg-in-ovary pregnancies.

Ba-dum-bum.

Anyway, I do understand the fear of aging. It brings death one year closer, right (well for y'all it does. Me, I'm planning on living long enough to transfer my consciousness to a robot like Sheldon on "Big Bang Theory")? But, let's be honest, for women death is not what we fear.

We fear our faces caving in.

I remember seeing an episode of Oprah back before she got all vaguely spiritual and got her own (HA) network so she could share her profound(ly shallow and extremely specific to her) revelations with the world 24 hours a day. It was a makeover episode with Cindy Crawford, and some expert on the episode said, "After age 25, a woman's face starts deteriorating and all we can do is slow the damage". I was probably about 14 at the time and I thought, "Oh no! I only have 11 years until my face starts caving in!"

This fear stuck with me through several life changes and spurred me on to make some incredibly stupid decisions.

"Well, I better say yes to riding in that boy's car while he drag races in the country because Lord knows I've got to find me a man before my face caves in."

"I better not say anything about the racist and inaccurate jokes my boss is making about my Jewish heritage because I really need to get a career going before my face caves in."

"I guess I better pop out some kids before my face caves in or they'll scream in horror when they emerge from my body and discover they were birthed by an alien."

(Disclaimer: I do not regret having my children. They are fantastic and totally understanding of Mommy's need to mop up her puddle of face for an hour every morning before we leave for therapy.)

(Oh Disclaimer Two: I'm not actually Jewish. My boss was going off a Jewish Studies minor and her absolute bat-crap craziness with that one.)

At 29, though, I'm pretty much past that fear. 25 is not when your face caves in. 29 is. Last night I went to bed at 28 and 364 days and I looked like this:

I'm so hot I can't even open my eyes all the way or the hotness of my eyeballs will catch your soul on fire.

And this morning I woke up at 29 and looked like this:

Made it this far. Eff lung cancer. Hand Granny her smokes!

I keed. I keed. Obviously, I still look exactly like Megan Fox (duuuuuuuh).

The thing is, I am no longer worried about my face caving in. When I was 16, the worst thing you could have called me was ugly. Now, I'll melt into a puddle of tears while listening to my Backstreet Boys album on repeat and eating chocolates stolen from my mom's "secret" treat cupboard if you call me stupid (sorry Mom). This is why I welcome 29 with open arms and am even more excited about 30. Established smart folks in their 30s and beyond tend to see kids in their early-mid-twenties as having the intellectual abilities of your average toaster (the kitchen appliance, not the futuristic super-robot). I can't really blame them for that as I have become guilty of it, too. I was having a lovely conversation with a very smart lady the other day and then I learned she was 24 and everything that came out of her mouth after that sounded like this, "Wewww, I fink Womney is a doodyhead. Him should get a spanking,"(If you're reading this, lovely lady, you need to know my old ass is being snarky to compensate for the fact that you still have your original face). We tend to forget that we had lots of opinions too, some of them even well-informed, when we were younger. Luckily, at 29, I am no longer automatically assumed to be a moron. I have to open my mouth to give people that impression.

I guess what I'm saying here is that even if my face does look like the surface of the moon when I wake up in the morning, I don't care because I'm finally getting to the point in life when even the jackasses who claim we're adolescents until we're 30 have to acknowledge I'm an adult...which is nice...considering I've been a legal adult for 11 years and have a college degree, a 7 yr. old marriage, a mortgage and 2 kids...which means that maybe they'll finally take me seriously...

...until they read my blog, that is.

OHMYGAH, where did my face go?!