I will preface this opinion, based on years of observation, by saying to the men who work hard to stay healthy that I am not dismissing your efforts. I get it. You spend the time in the gym working hard, you eat healthy, et cetera. But let's face it. Men in this category are so calm, cool, and collected about aging, taking it in stride year by year. They are afforded this perk because society allows them to age so exquisitely. The glimpse of gray interspersed in their five o'clock shadow really just accentuates their strong jawlines. The gathering of gray at their temples gives an appearance of maturity and experience.
And then you have my kind. Women who battle like MMA fighters raging against their opponents: time, gravity, and free radicals, just to name a few. Even though sweating our faces off at the gym for an hour and a half five days a week makes us feel healthy, strong, and youthful, all it takes is a flash of gray hair that poses a threat to our sanity scale. Those sprigs of gray have the ability to send us running through the house like mad women, finding a comfy place on the bathroom counter for a closeup in the mirror to further investigate. The following day we will promptly make an appointment at the hair salon. Facials, cleansers, moisturizers, eye creams, anti-aging creams, it all becomes a regimen. It's really a lot of work.
It's always this state of mind that tricks me into overtraining. I recently had an extra hour to burn and thought it was a great idea to add a short 700-meter swim to my regular cardio routine. Brilliant, right? It might have been if I was 25 and in prime triathlete shape, which is certainly not the case. The next day the strain in my rhomboid drastically reduced the range of motion in my neck, and that's how I ended up on the floor, flat on my back, alternating ice and heat while debating with my 14-year-old-One-Direction-loving daughter about the pros and cons of sitting through a showing of "This is Us." She immediately seized the opportunity at the first sign of my weakness and a free afternoon where my mobility was restricted. Being a successful negotiator at heart, she actually scares me with her swift-acting strategies. The kid will probably grow up to be a tenacious, badass dealmaker in the business world. Watch for her on the cover of Forbes.
The point of my story? Age really is just a number, but it never hurts to find a good hair stylist and start a savings account for your skin care regime. Laugh lines are a sign of happiness. They're incredibly beautiful. Embrace them. Avoid overtraining at all costs. The result is pain and exhaustion, and you risk the chance of your stellar parental negotiating skills temporarily becoming inferior to that of your apprentice, and you will find yourself sitting through two hours of One Direction telling you what makes you beautiful ... in 3D.
<sigh> Okay. So I have to be honest here. The truth is this: hanging out with my awesome teenager is always quite fun, the One Direction guys are adorable, I got a couple days off from working out, ate chocolate, hung out, laughed hard ...
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