I was just at my favorite semi-secret Financial District vegan joint, Little Lads, and noticed a woman neither young nor old, probably late 30s with a nice head of long, non-hippied gray and black hair. It looked good. For like the millionth time in my life I vowed to stop coloring my hair. But the good feeling only lasted about 20 minutes, until I was called ma’am when paying my bill. Then again, I’m not fooling anyone into calling me Miss with brown hair so why not just be a blatant un-cougar and let nature take its course? (Ok, I wrote the above yesterday and just now went to get lunch at the banh mi cart and the woman called me Miss. Now I'm totally torn.)
I’ve also been toying with taking a solo vacation to Oaxaca over Thanksgiving and have been looking into language classes. From photos on these school sites it appears that the average Spanish language student in Oaxaca is either an American sorority girl type or Chico’s-ish middle aged woman with short gray hair and colorful costume jewelry. I’m afraid that I’m already getting perilously close to funky retiree territory.
I don’t have many skills, but I’ve always been adept at makeup application. Hey, you have cling to what you can. I was recently thinking about that horrible ex-NYC friend who has a Portland-based blog now and how in like ’99 we went to the Times Square Olive Garden for Easter and she asked how I got my eyeliner so straight. That was a real insight into her psyche. I mean, you just draw on a line on your eyelid. Getting manicures, laundry done for you, bangs trimmed between cuts, apartments the size of my current bedroom cleaned by a maid, eating take out or prepared food from Whole Foods rather than cooking, eyebrows waxed and the like always seemed/seem like unnecessary luxuries, but it dawned on me that there are women who literally can’t do these things themselves because they are that incompetent. In the past year, I’ve noticed my eyeliner doesn’t go on nice and straight anymore, the line wavers and bumps. My hand is not shaking, my eyeliner isn’t shit…no, my skin has begun creasing and wrinkling around my eyes. Oh hell.