Schmuck Be A Lady

Well, I'm back from Sin City.  My trip was amazing..... a show every night, a spa day at the Bellagio, poolside rum drinks, hot weather, the fluffiest, softest, most loveliest bed you could ever imagine all to myself, and my bff for more than 30 years to hang out with.  It was perfect.

Except for one thing.

I am old.

I mean, not just on the inside like I was joking about in my last post.  Apparently I am old on the outside too.

And Vegas is a really bad place to come to this realization.

Let me tell you friends, in Vegas, there are pretty young girls everywhere.  They are at the pool in their little string bikinis with their smooth, tanned, flat bellies.  They are on the strip in their little black dresses with their perfectly applied makeup and flat ironed hair.  They are in the casinos, at the bars, in the clubs.  Everywhere you go, they are there serving as living, breathing, carefree and youthful reminders that them I am no longer.  

Actually, I'm not really sure I ever really was them.  Seriously, how do they get their hair so perfect?

It didn't matter how good I felt about myself every evening when I first left my hotel room.   No matter how well the Spanx sucked in my flab, no matter how perfectly hot rolled my hair was, no matter how tight the collagen mask had made my pores, every night I'd still step out of the elevators feeling the need to mutter a self validation mantra to myself: "I am beautiful, I am smart, I am kind."

I am old.

When did I turn into her?

When I was leaving our home on my way to Vegas, Mr. C called after me "Make smart choices!", which made me giggle because he sounded so much like Francis Dormand in Almost Famous; when she drops her son off in the parking lot at a rock concert and shouted at him through the car window "Don't do drugs!"

Anyway, Mr. C's reminder was helpful to me while I was in Vegas.  Not because I needed to be reminded to make smart choices, but because I know that in comparison to all the hot young girls I may look like Dolly Vegas up there, but to Mr. C I still look like me- and that person he considers attractive enough to be approachable.  And dangerous.

Rawr.

You all have a good night.