Digital Biological Clocks

If you want peace and tranquility hold a seashell up to your ear and listen for the soothing sounds of the ocean. If you want the opposite, hold a childless thirty-five year old woman close to your ear and listen for her biological clock. The tick tick ticking should serve as a warning to men but oftentimes it doesn't and they are left dumbfounded when after a brief one month relationship they find their girlfriends stenciling in pink and blue ducks on the walls of her apartment's "guest bedroom." This is not to say that all women are roaming the streets hunting men whilst muffling the ticking noises with layered clothing. There are women that do not want children. I fit into this category, subsequently causing all of my previous female relatives to roll over in their graves. 

This is not to say that I hate children, although it is a phrase that commonly passes my lips as I find it keeps strangers kids away from me, I just don't want to push one through my body and then be forced to raise it. Call me crazy, but I think I might be a tad bit resentful at the aftermath of that "little" event. The only thing I've ever raised from birth is a cocker spaniel and the fact that it is still alive is a source of day to day amazement to both my vet and myself. Not wanting children does not imply that you are not capable of giving love either. I consider myself a loving and caring individual and I don't see how hooking up a breast pump to my nipple is going to make that love any more convincing or true. 

Babies can be cute and sweet. They can smell good and say things funnier than a drunken uncle at a Christmas dinner. Some can even convince you that they didn't just throw up into your Chanel purse. But at the end of the day I would just prefer that they go home with someone else, thats all. It doesn't make me a bad example of womanhood, slightly selfish perhaps, but just as opinionated as a woman with her mind set on having children. You know the ones. You can spot them by listening out for the "ooohs" and "ahhhs" as baby strollers pass by in the mall. They are also always the ones asking to hold other people's babies, they could be complete strangers, it makes no mind to the ticking time bomb of a uterus. It takes all kinds though right? If everyone wanted children the world would be overpopulated. 

So should you see my dog and I out at the park for a pleasant afternoon stroll please don't assume that because I appear thirty-five or under I surely want to play with your adorable sticky-fingered sweaty little rugrat. I do not. My uterus is not ticking, nor has it ever, I sent it away on holiday years ago when I explained that I had no need for it. The only C section in my future is section C aboard a cruise and the only bottle I want is 80 proof Grey Goose vodka. If I ever did have a biological clock it must have been a digital one, power failures are always short circuiting digital clocks. I guess my uterus just blew a fuse.

30 Is The New 20, But Only If You Squint

Reaching 30 is a lot like reaching the middle of a pint of Ben & Jerryʼs. You canʼt believe its almost gone and you donʼt know how long the rest will last. Just the words, “your twenties” sounds so innocent, so appealing. Are you married? “Oh no, Iʼm just in my twenties.” See? Innocent. Try the same question with a different response. “On no, Iʼm just in my thirties.” This answer will not produce the sympathetic and smiling responses of the previous twenty something but rather knowing nods or downward turned eyes, clearly bearing my burden of shame for me. Women in their thirties are also seemingly expected to have their lives figured out for them. Whether spinster fairies slip life syllabi under our pillows at night or we design a working flow chart to follow is uncertain, what I do know is that none of these plans are valid. You might as well try to plan where the next stretch mark is going to appear on your body. Its going to be a surprise no matter how right you think you are.

I canʼt help but wonder if my mother is disappointed in me. After all, she was married at nineteen and then went on to raise a family of two children with my father. My mom was a mother of two at my age and I canʼt even keep the azalea bushes on my front lawn from dying. She has two children, I have two college degrees. She has a husband, I have an obese black cocker spaniel. She had a flow chart to life that worked beautifully, I canʼt even have an orderly menstrual cycle. I refuse to hold a pity party though because other women feel the same way I do, besides Iʼm still recovering from last months bawling bash in the swimsuit dressing room at Saks. Flow charts, Life syllabi and well devised plans for an ordered approach to our thirties are pointless. Sure. Sure. We could create elaborately detailed goal lists but you know as well as I that those lists and charts are like a pair of Spanx. When we slip those makeshift girdles on over our trouble areas we feel weʼve covered the problem, but deep down you know as well as I that at the end of the day when we peel off those powerful panties all our problems are exposed all over again, thereʼs no hiding from 30. 

If there is nothing to fear but fear itself then perhaps its time we take a new approach to our thirty something viewpoints. Off with the old and on with the new, or rather in this case, off with the perky and on with the saggy. Sag away ladies. Thats what supportive bras are for. Smile as wide and often as you like, thats why La Mer made wrinkle cream. And most importantly, when someone questions your lack of a life plan donʼt make excuses for it, simply ask them about theirs. More often than not they do not have one either. Their flow charts are missing boxes. Their goal sheets are lacking check marks. And more than likely, their dog ate their life syllabus. 

A Life Lesson In Briefs

 The life of a single woman oftentimes can become a mix of granny panties and Christian Louboutin heels. Stylish heels portraying an image of seduction to attract our heartʼs desire while under our facade we are more like the sexless underwear; 

comfortable, worn and one wash cycle away from ripping at the very seams that hold us together. Some women take to their single status with pride and a certain je ne sais quoi that others, such as myself, do not posses. I took to my newfound manless state much like an AA member forced to attend group meetings in a bar; I was confused, lost and more often than not, needed a good strong gin and tonic. My je ne sais quoi had je ne sais left. 

The first month post-breakup was the most effective. By effective I mean that I single handedly transformed my body two dress sizes larger by a diet of Ben & Jerryʼs ice cream and pizza. At one point the Papa Johns delivery boy recognized me and knew me by name, it was around that point I figured I had wallowed in my misery (and trans fats) enough. Judging from stories Iʼve heard from other women, my one month of fatty foods and empty ice cream pints in the recycling bin were hardly noteworthy. 

 Now, nearly a year post-breakup, Iʼm realizing more and more some of the perks of my new unattached status. Showers are shorter for the simple fact that if you donʼt want to shave your legs, you simply donʼt, you just wear pants. Simple. Secondly, you donʼt have to wear that lace bra and matching thong set if you donʼt want to because nobody is going to see it but you. Go commando. Sport a pair of cotton briefs in a horrendous Christmas tree pattern. For the first time your underwear is truly yours, not bought for the sole purpose of pleasing someone else. The experience has been more liberating than the time I ate an entire loaf of french bread after quitting a no carb diet. Freeing. Blissful. Just with less bloating. 

There is nothing wrong with being single. This is a sentence I had to repeat to myself over and over in the first few months of my new cotton brief wearing life. Why? As a Southern girl you are born and bred to grow up, get married and raise babies. At 

nearly 29 I consider myself neither grown up, married and the only baby I have raised is an obese black cocker spaniel that answers to the name of an alcoholic beverage, Martini. I wonʼt lie to you. The mantra takes some time to sink in. I would say it in the car. “There is nothing wrong with being single.” I would say it in the checkout aisle of the Winn-Dixie, “There is nothing wrong with being single,” much harder to inwardly chant while outwardly ashamed of your shopping cart full of Lean Cuisines, tampons and Diet Coke. Classic spinster cart. Practice makes perfect. I still have to say it to myself in situations. I say it when I open wedding invitations in the mail from 22 year old relatives. I say it when I attend baby showers for my old sorority sisters. I even reminded myself of it at a funeral once, although Iʼm still not quite sure what that was about. I also vaguely remember being appalled at the chosen outfit for the deceased at the open casket wake, black lace on a corpse is a bit too Morticia Adams if you ask me, so perhaps it had less to do with the mantra and more to do with my possibly not having any funeral etiquette whatsoever. 

 Iʼve cried into a lot of tissues, read a number of “How to land a man” articles and even briefly considered a speed dating service (although Iʼm fairly certain the thought consideration I gave to that idea was shorter than the speed dates themselves), and Iʼve come to a conclusion. There is nothing wrong with being single. So pull on those granny panties ladies and hold your head up high, we may be worn and the wear and tear of life may have left some holes in us, but you have to admit, when the going gets tough, we know how to cover our own ass.