• Middle Ages

    Hot Takes on Hot Flashes (Not on My Watch)

    November 20, 2016

    So, I may expand my coverage from drinking-related bits to broader themes–at least from time to time. I’m definitely not going to stop drinking. I implemented “Drygust” last month in a misguided attempted to de-chunk a little before a vacation and ended up gaining two pounds (so middle-aged, amirite?). (Argh, and now two months have passed since I originally wrote this and I’ve gained another 8 pounds–SSRIs are not my friend.)

    I’ve decided to revive this as a standalone blog and go hard on the subject. I’ve had four years (Jesus) to acclimate to the notion of middle-age, and I’m starting to come around and make peace with it. It’s not a bad place to be.

    But if I’m being honest, half the impetus is being driven by an unwinnable internal inter-generational feud and the need to claim what’s mine. Each passing year means millennials get that much closer to owning bone loss and comfortable shoes. The oldest in that cohort will be hitting 40 in five years, and we’re never going to hear the end of of it. Hot takes on hot flashes, making atrophied vaginas cool (yes, I’m obsessed with shriveled vaginas). 

    I will not let that stand (even if it requires a cane)!

    read more
  • Middle Ages,  Screen Time

    I Can’t Figure Out How to Watch Younger…

    November 10, 2016

    …is it because I’m Older?

    It took ¾ of the year to finally cut the cord I said I would in January. It’s great. I’m in control. It’s possibly shifted something in my brain. I’ve cobbled together Netflix (ex’s login), Hulu (friend’s login) and paid Sling TV and HBO Now, and it covers 90% of my needs. 

    However, I don’t appear to have access to TV Land, home of the best 40-year-old (Liza must be 41 by now?) posing as 26 farce. And this will not do. 

    read more
  • Middle Ages
    November 8, 2016

    Day 38, period-less. Is this menopause? The beginning of the end? I have absolutely no idea how menopause even works and I’m dreading the time a decade from now where the older millennials will be owning it and making atrophied vaginas cool.

    read more
  • Middle Ages
    November 4, 2016

    I used to think the scary part of getting older was dying, but it turns out the scary part of getting older is young people. It’s like we’re the Indians and they’re the white settlers and they keep coming and taking all our resources, and all we’re left with is diseased blankets.

    Typing and watching while piecing together my modified 10-step Korean(ish) beauty routine (Skinfood Rice Brightening Facial Cleansing Tissue, Naruko Magnolia Brightening and Firming Toner EX, Cosrx Galactomyces 95 Whitening Power Essence, Mad Hippie Vitamin C Serum, Missha All Around Safe Block Essence Sun SPF 45) to stave off the impending skin withering and falling off my skull.

    read more
  • Middle Ages

    Kids These Days

    October 11, 2016

    Like the darts Zink tosses in conversation and in writing (a friend’s novel “has weaknesses you could drive a truck through”), her life story feels exhilaratingly reckless: a childhood in tidewater Virginia with unspecified traumas; college at William & Mary followed by stints as a bricklayer, secretary, musician, and zine publisher; two doomed marriages, one to a poet in Tel Aviv; 16 unwed years in Germany; a Ph.D. in media studies from Tübingen; and a correspondence with fellow bird-watcher Jonathan Franzen that led circuitously to her current and possibly strangest phase: middle-aged enfant terrible.

    read more
  • Middle Ages

    Being Into Middle-Aged People Is Probably a Sexual Orientation

    August 24, 2016

    If you haven’t heard the above term “mesophilia” before, that’s because Seto created it to to refer to people who are attracted to middle-aged individuals. “I think nobody has studied mesophilia yet because it’s not seen as a pressing need clinically,” Seto explained. In other words — and this is a point he makes in his paper as well — if a mesophile goes about searching for sexual gratification by casing the local Target for dads who are down, it doesn’t put anyone at risk of harm (homewrecking aside) or lead to lawbreaking in the way a pedophile searching for victims does. So because of the lack of research interest in mesophilia, Seto is inferring the existence of this orientation rather than pointing to an established literature on it.

    read more