106 Days - No, Judd… THIS is Forty.

My husband and I went to see the Judd Apatow movie “This is Forty” on Monday afternoon – New Year’s Eve –not unlike many other middle-aged couples grasping to convince themselves that *this* New Year was going to be different than all the rest; that they were going to spend more time together as a couple (so let’s start with a movie!) and remember what it was like to actually like one another (how about drinks afterward? Many drinks!) and that they were determined – DETERMINED – to start new/fresh/over and have it be different/unique/special. And so we went, popcorn-free, to watch a flick about just how different/unique/special we are not, and to be frank it was probably the perfect way to start the year that will bestow upon me a fresh new number to start my age with.

I’m a Big Paul Rudd Fan, and like most Big Paul Rudd Fans I’ve been a BPRF since the first time I saw him in the movie Clueless. There is something just so adorably irresistible about him in every bad movie he makes which keeps me coming…

…back for more.

He’s my “one”… ya know, the one who your spouse gives you the pass on if you ever get the chance to sleep with the person. Todd’s totally cool with my choice of Paul Rudd. I think it’s because he’s not threatening. A Hugh Jackman can be threatening. Tall. Muscular. Sings. Dances. Speaks in heavy Australian accent. Looks that would make the Queen of England moisten her britches. Potential to blow you across the room with tsunami-like orgasm. Way fucking threatening. Way, way threatening. Not Paul Rudd. Black hair. Blue eyes. Short. Kind of pudgy. Hairy-chested. Skinny-ankled. And likely not very well endowed. Todd knows that if I rode the Rudd train I’d still be back to spend the rest of my life with him, so he’s given me the hypothetical okay to get my ticket stamped if the situation ever presented itself. Best. Husband. Ever.

So there I was, next to my guy, watching so much of our current life unfold on the screen in front of us. I think I didn’t cry for about a ten minute stretch, and it’s a fucking comedy. It hit so close to home that I found myself not focusing on the movie so that I could think about whether or not our house had been bugged or if there could be hidden cameras planted in shower heads and fireplaces. So much of my life was on that screen for all of Winter Park, Florida to see. And people were laughing at it, and I wanted to scream at them, “Hey, you, YOU… the twenty-four-year-old douchebag with the running shorts and the freshly done highlights… that’s going to be you, too, asswipe. JUST YOU FUCKING WAIT. MAKE YOUR BOTOX APPOINTMENTS EARLY, DICKWAD!” I wanted to but I didn’t, and so I sat in a tear-soaked theater seat holding tightly to my partner’s hand as we laugh-cried at our life as we know it and silently thought one similar thought…

“This year is going to be different/unique/special.”

I’m no Leslie Mann. Well, meaning I’m not whiney. I am actually a bit more like Paul Rudd’s character in the movie (Spoiler Alert) meaning I’m likely to be the one secretly eating cupcakes or staring at Megan Fox’s tits wishing I could grope them and wondering what she’d be like in the sack. I’m definitely the one who sneaks to the bathroom six or seven times a day just to escape. I’m clearly the one who would call Todd in to make him look at some weird growth on my labia or discoloration of my poop and I sure as shit am the one who would rather listen to Alice In Chains than Lady Gaga. Actually, that’s both of us (thank you, Jeebus). But Leslie’s character and I had some similarities. The constant cry of “I want us to feel passion like that again” was not lost on either of us as she watched Megan Fox get plowed during business hours on the counter of the clothing boutique that Leslie’s character owned. With the door unlocked. In broad daylight. I remember days like that. I remember the outside shower at our friends’ beach house when everyone had already headed home. I remember the locked bathroom door of the nightclub I worked at while a line of people waited outside trying desperately not to pee their fishnets. I remember the parking lot of a Buckhead design center and the yet-to-be finished walls of a yet-to-be-determined building. I remember, even now, at almost forty, and I, like Leslie’s character, might be trying too hard to hold on to those moments instead of simply recalling fondly that they were had; allowing them to be memories instead of forcing them to be goals. I walked out of the movie theater ready to come to terms with the fact that I am not twenty, or thirty, and that I am not in the best shape of my life and that I won’t have a four-hour sexual experience without one of us complaining about our sciatica. But I also walked out convinced that I’m not ready to give up, either, and that I can still look great “For Forty” and be cool “For Forty” and rock the fuck out… for any goddamned age.

So, this is it. One-hundred and six days left. This Is Forty, and Forty is dry skin and insecurity and laugh lines and cellulite and stretch marks and bad eyesight and graying hair and thinning lips and fatigue and weird lumps and regret and emotional outbursts and technological ineptness and mammograms and sore muscles and colonoscopies and wine for breakfast and bittersweet symphonies and girdles and support hose and sunscreen and arthritis and fiber.

But those laugh lines developed over years from genuine, hearty laughter, of which I’ve had loads of. And those stretch marks came from the two beautiful children who give me reason to wake up every day. That cellulite? From the eggplant-stuffed pork loin I made on Sunday night that I served with a lovely Meritage. The sore muscles are due to years of dancing on seven-inch platform heels with my best friends on Saturday nights. The support hose is for all the time I spent on my feet working so that I could send myself to Europe on my thirtieth birthday. The gray hair is inherited from my mother and serves as a reminder of her whenever I see it in my mirror. And the fatigue is proof that I did all of these things and that I would do them all again if I were in my twenties or thirties. But, I’m not. Well, almost not. I’m almost in my forties.

And it’s awesome.