Mid-Life Crisis

My 20th high school reunion is this summer.  

I remember my parents going to their 20th reunion.  It was a couple months before my dad moved out.  They were high school sweethearts.  

I haven't been to any reunions since I graduated.  The 10th was right after I had my first baby and I was embarrassed about my weight.  Yup, I'm that shallow.  And to be totally honest it was almost a year after my first baby and I was still embarrassed about my weight.

Now that I have connected with so many people from high school on Facebook a reunion actually sounds pretty fun.

It's just weird.  Weird to get older.  Weird to be the same age my parents were when they got divorced.  Which I thought was soooooo old.

Back in the day, I remember this time was when people's parents were splitting up, buying sports cars (a Mazda Miata was very popular then) and dying their hair.  It was called a mid-life crisis and everyone's parents were doing it.

Okay, so here's the thing...is this where I am now?  Mid-life crisis?  Will friends' marriages start falling apart?  Will my girlfriend's husband come home with a new convertible?  

Maybe.

Not so sure about the whole mid-life thing, because I plan on living to be very fucking old.  But I get it.  We're a bit older and a little bit wiser.  We know what we will put up with and what we won't.  Many of us have had our babies.  Many of us have worked jobs that we thought were going to be wonderful, but eh, now they aren't so great.  

But it's a weird thing, this whole 21st century mid-life crisis.  It's like the commercial where the woman says I have zits and wrinkles, yikes.  We have student loans we are still paying, but we are taking our retirement savings totally more seriously now.

We are looking at our lives and wondering if this is what we want for the rest of it.  We are young enough to change careers or even go back to school but old enough to have so many responsibilities that make it risky albeit a mortgage, kids, or even taking care of our aging parents.


The classic quote from the 1989 movie Parenthood runs through my head, you know the one where Steve Martin's character says "My whole life is HAVE to." 

It's weird.

My daughter was talking about watching the movie Parent Trap and I told her I had only seen the Hayley Mills version, which was made "a long time ago."  She went on to tell me the Lindsay Lohan version was made a long time ago too, way back in the "1900s."

She thinks I am so old, and I get it.  


If that all got too heavy, keep reading.

Feist's new video for "Bittersweet Memories" is very touching, but it is also very creepy and funny to me.  So funny to me I did my own flashback photo shoot:

(Who doesn't still have their seventh grade dance costume?)

(If you can't watch this video because you are reading this on your phone or ipad, you are totally confused by my pictures I know.  Sorry.)

You know I had so much fun with this flashback photo shoot and my husband was such a good sport to take the pictures.  Hilarious. And yes, I was drinking wine, which made it so much funnier. Just like my old high school days, maybe not so much has changed. Uh-oh, now it just got kind of sad. Whatever!