I've Still Got It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty - Softcover

McCarthy, Jenna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425272532 ISBN 13: 9780425272534

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Welcome to Middle Age! Please check your functioning internal thermostat and razor-sharp memory at the door and pour yourself a nice, stiff drink...

Jenna McCarthy might be forty-something, but she doesn’t feel forty-something. She certainly doesn’t look forty-something. (Actually she does, but she’s in denial so maybe don’t mention it?) And between complaining about how tired she is, trying to remember what she came in here for and wondering whether she drinks too much, she does not have time for a crisis.

She has, however, had time to crack the mysterious midlife code. She’s figured out how to tame her muffin top, keep the spark in her marriage and probably not die a fiery hoarder’s death. She’s learned the trick to looking ten years younger and the secret to feeling ten times happier (and it only cost $14.99 plus shipping and handling). And she’s discovered the one thing she will need to do for the rest of ever if she’s going to continue to refuse to “dress her age.”

Tackling everything from cosmetic surgery and financial panic to skinny jeans and the meaning of life, I’ve Still Got It... is a middle age manifesto filled with hilarious misadventures, humiliating confessions and occasional (hot) flashes of genius.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jenna McCarthy is the internationally published writer of If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon and The Parent Trip, former radio personality, and recovering leopard-print addict. She lives in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband, two daughters, and lots of dog and cat hair.

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INTRODUCTION

I was at dinner with a group of girlfriends when the conversation turned, as it frequently does these days, to cosmetic surgery. But not the kind you’re thinking about. No, we weren’t discussing brow lifts or butt implants or big, bouncy new boobs or even a little subtle liposculpting. The topic—and you might want to brace yourself for this one—was vaginal rejuvenation. And not in the “hey doc, while you’re down there working your episiotomy magic, maybe you could throw in an extra stitch or two, wink, wink” sense, either. That actually would be considered reconstructivesurgery, the mostly medically-necessary kind that’s designed to improve a body part’s particular function. Apparently there is something—a cosmetic procedure, an actual thing—that women are paying God knows how many thousands of dollars for so that their lady parts will look . . . prettier. And younger. And even, dare I say it? Fresher.

“But what . . . ? Why . . . ?” I was not contributing very effectively to the conversation. First of all, I was too embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t recently (or more accurately, ever) given my muffin anything resembling a thorough inspection, so I wasn’t even sure if it looked old and ugly. But more importantly, did it matter if it did? I guess to some gals, it most certainly did.

According to one practitioner’s website (because hell yeah, I Googled it), the cosmetic procedure in question—it’s called a labiaplasty, by the way—“changes the size or shape of the labia, typically making them smaller or correcting an asymmetry between them.” To be clear, I had absolutely no clue if my labia were oversized or lopsided, and I wasn’t about to start caring. All I could think when I read this was: Haven’t we raised the bar high enough already, people? Now our fucking vaginas have to look twenty-two forever, too? Where will it end?

I wondered about old women with youthful vaginas more than I should have. Were they porn stars or prostitutes or just lust-driven nymphomaniacs? Had some cruel lover given their beavers an unkind nickname that compelled these gals, in collective droves of despair, to long to be more beautiful . . . down there? Were they plastic surgery junkies who’d just about run out of body parts to perfect but then they caught a glimpse of their V-traps in a mirror and thought, Whoops, I almost forgot about that!? Because I’d have to be pretty damned pleased with every other inch of my body before it would even occur to me to mess with that particular part. “Let’s see, my neck doesn’t jiggle, my thighs are smooth and cellulite free, my rack is up around my neck . . . I’ll just get a little labia trim and then I’ll be good as new!”

I hadn’t even recovered from the vagina business when I found myself having a life-changing conversation with my sister Laurie. I was relating something my doctor had said that Laurie, as a health professional, found surprising.

“How old is he?” Laurie wanted to know.

“He’s young,” I told her. “You know, our age.”

Even though Laurie is an otherwise lovely person, she had the nerve to laugh at this.

“Jen, we are notyoung,” she said.

It was one thing to learn that my vagina might be getting a little long in the tooth; it was another to hear—from my older sister—that Iwas.

“Well, we’re not old,”I said, a thirteen on your one-to-ten defensiveness scale. Old is a relative term of course, but I think it’s safe to define it as “twenty or more years older than you are when being asked to define it.”

“No, we’re midlife,” my bitch of a sister informed me cavalierly. I am forty-five, and Laurie is forty-seven. Were we past our best-by dates already? And if we were, when had that happened?

“Mom’s midlife,” I contended.

“No, Mom’s old. We’re midlife,” Laurie insisted.

“Well, your vagina is older than mine,” I spat.

Was it hot in there or was it just me?

I did not like that word, midlife. For one thing, it sounded like midwife, which immediately conjured images of childbirth, a process I found more than a little traumatizing. Plus it sort of implied that I was halfway to the grave, which surely couldn’t be the case. The roadmap of lines on my face and my possibly withered vagina notwithstanding (I never did check*), I didn’t feel one bit different than I did when I was twenty-five and staying up all night dancing on bar stools. Well, maybe a tad less energetic. And probably a little more impatient. And I guess slightly more edgy. And definitely more confident. And a lot more squishy and “I don’t give a shit.” But other than those things, exactly the same.

The other issue I was having was that everyone knows midlife isn’t a noun; it’s an adjective—created to modify a single word: crisis. “Midlife crisis,” we whisper when we hear our friend Gina is having a fling with her gardener or Eve’s getting an eye lift. We’re half jealous (we want free hedge trims and perky eyes, too, damn it!), half relieved that we’re not the ones experiencing what some might consider the equivalent of a grown-up temper tantrum.

I was almost definitely positive that I wasn’t having any sort of crisis, but just to be sure, I Googled it. On the UK’s Daily Telegraphwebsite I found a handy list of “signs you’re having a midlife crisis,” and for the record, inspecting your vagina for signs of listlessness wasnot on the list. Here are a few items that were (note that some may be paraphrased because Brits love using fancy spelling for words likerealise that my spellcheck feature does not like):

1. Wishing for a simpler life. [Stares at unread stack of Real Simple magazines in horror.]
2. Looking up old flames on Facebook. Crap.
3. Compulsively reminiscing about your childhood. But catching fireflies and riding a bike without a helmet, you guys! That shit was awesome.
4. Obsessively comparing your appearance with your peers. Define “obsessively” please, Telegraph.
5. Discovering your hangovers are worse and last longer than they used to. Not if you keep drinking!
6. Revisiting vacation spots you went to as a child. But I already know how to get there!
7. Googling medical symptoms. Do young people not do this???
8. Tooling around town on a fancy new bike. Whew! Dodged a bullet there.
9. Taking up a new hobby. Does searching online for plastic surgery before-and-after pictures count, do you suppose?
10. Finding yourself easily distracted. Wait, what was I saying?

After I determined that at least by UK standards I had several of the symptoms of a classic midlife crisis, I proceeded to do something I generally try to avoid: I did some math. If I lived to be ninety, I would be squarely in the middle of my life. Even if I lived to ninety-five, I’d fall in the range. I’d pretty much have to reach a hundred and ten to even remotely be considered young by relative standards.

I’m not going to lie to you, my odds of living to a hundred and ten are slim. I grew up on a steady diet of Kraft macaroni and cheese and cream cheese and jelly on Wonder Bread sandwiches. When I wasn’t cramming my piehole with such healthy, gourmet delights, I was very busy secondhand chain-smoking four packs of unfiltered Kool cigarettes a day. I did this religiously for the first eighteen years of my life, indulging on airplanes, in the car, and right at the kitchen table. Sometimes during dinner. I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0425272532
• ISBN 13: 9780425272534
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland