Lessons on Transition

I bought a big bag of Epsom salt yesterday because I read that Epsom salt baths are full of awesome. They soothe achy muscles, reduce inflammation, help you sleep, etc., etc., etc. When I told my husband this and informed him that the bag was in my bathroom if he ever wanted to use it, he simply looked at me and said, ‘Oh good God. We’re old. You should never repeat those words to anyone else ever again.’ And it dawned on me… Oh, shit. He’s totally right. Epsom salt baths are for old people and are just another link in a growing chain of discoveries of how old we really are. Shit.

Here are my recent discoveries/observations. I’m saying ‘we’ just to make myself feel better. This may really only be about me. (Gasp.)

Getting ‘the girls’ together requires thirteen texts or emails and two months of advance notice. (We used to just show up every Thursday at rotating houses to watch ‘Must See TV’ and eat fondue and drink beer.)
When said dinner with the girls finally happens, choosing a location becomes tricky because someone’s on a cleanse, someone’s not consuming dairy, someone’s not eating gluten, someone’s not drinking this month, someone isn’t eating soy… and I guarantee you that a conversation about cross-fit, the paleo diet, and/or juice cleanses will come up. (We used to talk about boys and booze while we ate pizza and fried cheese.)
My husband wears reading glasses. And I think they’re sexy as hell.
We make dinner reservations for 6:00pm.
We arrive home before SNL airs on Saturday nights and we usually don’t stay awake through the monologue.
We make noises when we stand up.
Hangovers last two days. Oh hell, who am I kidding? Three. They last three damn days.
We subscribe to the New Yorker and Money Magazine and no longer know who ¾ of the people in US Weekly are. Our subscriptions to Rolling Stone and Shape have expired.
We know that two glasses of wine is our limit. Three is a slippery slope. (We used to drink bottles. Of our own. And then some.)
21-year olds look 16 to us. They can’t possibly be old enough to drink, we say.
Everyone’s running a half-marathon or doing cross-fit or going to hot yoga classes five times a week or 5am boot camp sessions. And we post about our training incessantly.
We care about what we put on our skin and what we clean our homes with. (We used to use whatever was the cheapest.)
We can’t have dinner too late or we won’t sleep well.
We pop supplements, put chia seeds in our smoothies, own Vitamixes, engage in dry brushing and oil pulling rituals, and we’re working on incorporating meditation into our lives.
Our parents are moving closer to us. And we’re grateful for that.
Friday happy hour? Doubtful. I’ve got a date with my jammies at 6:30pm.
A trip to the beach has us searching for tankinis at Nordstrom’s and wondering if it’s ok to wear a one-piece?
We can’t have caffeine after 3:00pm.
We say things like, ‘Remember when we had to use dial-up Internet?’
In our drawers is an old Razor phone and/or Walkman and/or Gameboy.