Sometimes, as I age, I reflect on the halcyon days when I could eat like any twenty lumberjacks and stay slender; when I could go outside with the unmade-up face God gave me without making small children clutch at their mothers; when I could sport a ratty t-shirt, holey cut-offs, and flipflops and still look fabbo owing to the smokin’ condition of the bod that the rags were barely covering. I realize sadly that I didn’t appreciate those times nearly enough.

I was never a great dresser. If I ever went out looking smart and pulled-together, it was by sheer happy accident or because my mother had sent me an outfit and my kids had vetted it before I went out the door. The odds were better that I’d have some article of clothing or other inside out or backwards. I went to work wearing two different shoes – not once or twice, but THREE times. You have to be a serious fashion retard to manage that one. The second time, I worked close enough to go home and change them, and told my boss upon my return that I had gone home because I had put on unmatched shoes and worn them all the way to the office. There was a long pause, and she asked, fearfully: “. . . were they . . . close?”

These days, as an older broad, I realize I have to be a lot more careful, which is a pain in the arse because if I didn’t care much about how I looked when I was a looker, I truly have trouble giving a damn about being anything other than clean and unpatched now. I resent putting on makeup just to go to the store, but I know damn well that the one time I don’t, I’ll run into some professor I have a crush on.

Once in a while, probably when the estrogen’s still sputtering out a bit, I’ll take a fancy to tart myself up and I’ll change my hair, give myself a pedicure, or do some other bodily maintenance. These feeble attempts can be discouraging because I still don’t have any talent for it, and have the added handicap of the fogginess of age. The other night as I watched “Nightmare Alley” I absentmindedly rubbed about a cup of hair conditioner into my arms and legs, thinking it was body lotion.