Missing!

I always tell Tim that if I die first, he will have to sell the house 'as is' because he knows where NOTHING is.

"Do we have band-aids? a heating pad? extra guest towels?  tape? scissors?  toilet paper?  the check book?  my cell phone?  milk?"

Seriously, if it can't jump up and down, waving a flag and screaming "Here I am! Here I am!" while a big neon arrow hangs above it, he can't find it.

I have seen the man literally stand in front of an open fridge telling me we don't have any butter when there are four pounds of it staring back at him.

"Oh.  Well.  How was I supposed to see it behind the yogurt?"

 Yeah.  I can see where that would be a problem what with the clear glass shelves, and also because the butter has only been kept there since, hmm. let me think, FOREVER!

At least when I can't find something, there is a very good reason for it...it's because I have put it someplace  so safe that no one, including me, would think to look for it there.

Most recent case in point:  a phone number on a post-it.

I was given the number late on a Friday afternoon about two weeks ago and I stuffed it into my purse among the eighty-six thousand old dry cleaning tickets, thirty-nine dozen empty Halloween candy wrappers, one hundred pens (only two of which actually work), fifty stubs of old eye/lip pencils, assorted flip-flops (for pedicures), twenty-six pounds of change all in pennies and nickels, and twelve million dollars worth of twenty percent off coupons for Bed Bath and Beyond from 2006 that I habitually carry.

At some point on Saturday, I got the oh so brilliant idea to put the post-it someplace safe, so that I could actually find it to call first thing Monday morning.  And that is the last time I saw that post-it.

I spent days looking for the crummy little thing.  I looked in all the usual places like the office, my bedside table, jewelry box, and bathroom counter.  I looked in less likely places, hoping to shift the blame for losing it, like Tim's bedside table, Tim's dresser, Tim's "basket o' crap" (which is the male equivalent to my purse) in the TV room.  No post-it.  It had vanished into thin air.

I played a few rounds of the "If I were a post-it,where would I be?" game and the "If I were going to put something in a really safe place, where would it be?" game, but I was so bad at both of them I didn't even get the consolation prize of a years supply of Rice-a- Roni, let alone my post-it.

Finally, after opening the same drawers/cupboards/doors for the thousandth time in the mad, hope that the stupid post-it would have magically appeared, I had to give up, call the person who gave me the number, admit that I was losing my mind and/or stupid, and ask for the number again.  Ugh.

And the thing is, I just know, based on past experience that that lousy post-it will show up when and where I least expect it.  One day, I will open the freezer, or decide to organize the garage and there it will be, mocking me, like the cup of coffee I lost awhile back.

One minute, I had the cup in my hands, the next, I had no idea where I left it.  We were getting ready to go out, so I couldn't mount a full scale search and rescue mission, but I did try to retrace my steps and even made slurping noises, calling, "Here coffee, coffee," but to no avail.  My coffee was nowhere to be found.

About a week later, Tim opened the hall closet to get something out and emerged with a coffee cup and a funny look on his face. 

"Remember that coffee you lost?" he asked, holding it at arms length as though it were a poisonous snake or ticking time bomb.  "I think I just found it...or what used to be it.  Now, it's more like a science experiment gone bad."

Eww.  Well, that's one way to kick the coffee habit.

But my all-time best (worst?) was years and years ago (which I unfortunately couldn't blame on age, like I do now), and involved a ring.

This was the first really "nice" piece of jewelry Tim had given me, and I was sooo careful with it.  Right up to the moment I lost it.

I had packed it in our bags to go to Pennsylvania for Easter, and when we got there, the ring was gone.

I blamed the airline employees, sure that it had been stolen, but  Tim pointed out that since we had driven ourselves, that was unlikely.

All through Easter, I checked and rechecked our bags.  I fretted, fumed and worried, anxious to get home.  Finally, the holiday came to an end, we drove home, and I barely waited for Tim to slow down before I was out of the car, making a beeline for our apartment.

No ring.  I looked high and low and everywhere in between.  No ring.  I ripped apart every drawer in the place.  I searched old suitcases, purses and toiletry kits.  No ring.

"Pray to Saint Anthony," my mother advised, nodding sagely.  "It always works for me.

I prayed.  No ring.  I prayed harder, but he must have been helping my mother find all the things she lost (a full-time job even for a saint), because I still couldn't find that darn ring.

"Put it out of your mind,"  Tim told me.  "If you don't think about it, you'll remember what you did with it."

Good plan, general.  Except for one tiny little flaw.  Not thinking was clearly how I got into this mess in the first place!!!  Got a plan B you'd like to share?

Days turned to weeks, weeks to months and then one day, I took down a box from the tippy-top closet shelf where I kept mementos, opened it to put something in and...there was the ring!

To this day, I still have no idea how it came to be in that box.  I suspect elves.  Or maybe fairies.  Hmmm. Possibly a poltergeist.  Because I know I couldn't possibly have put it there.  I would have put it someplace "safe".

I Am Officially Old

As we celebrated out 24th wedding anniversary last month, Tim held my hands, gazed deeply into my eyes and said, "Do you realize that your parents were only two years older than we are now when we got married?"

And they say romance is dead.

Thinking he couldn't possibly be right, I did some quick mental calculations, pulled out our wedding album, double checked our birth certificates, and registered at Ancestry.com.  I vividly remember my parents being old when we got married.  There was no way they could have been as young as we are now.

I remember them regularly falling asleep on the couch, staying home on Friday and Saturday nights to watch TV, and needing glasses and a 3000 watt bulb to read anything. They didn't "get" why everyone from David Cassidy to Don Johnson was cool and Frank Sinatra and Van Johnson weren't.  (Really?!  Frank actually had teenage groupies?  Aww.  C'mon.  You're making that up.)  And they absolutely, positively did not share our appreciation of Aerosmith, Meatloaf or anybody who recorded a song after 1963.

I mean, yes, maybe we occasionally might possibly rest our eyes for a few minutes while watching TV, but we don't ever fall asleep.  And perhaps we don't feel a pressing need to be out every weekend, especially if there is some kind of showdown on the Food Network or a really cool item shows up on Pawn Stars.  As for reading glasses?  Well, if they would stop "Micro"-ing everything these days, we'd be fine.  Just because the microchip caught on doesn't mean they have to print everything in minuscule font.

We are still young, hip and cool.  We not only know who Lady Gaga is, we have her on our ipods and at least one of us knows who Selina Gomez and Demi Lovato are.  We still go to concerts (Okay, so our last concert was Marvin Hamlish and the last movie we saw starred the Chipmunks, but that still counts.  Right?)

I actually had myself convinced that, despite hard evidence to the contrary, Tim was wrong, wrong, wrong.  And then I went back-to-school shopping with our niece last weekend.

Now, years ago when the older kids first discovered Abercrombie and Fitch, I gritted my teeth and went with them.  (Seriously?  You want how much for a shirt that looks like the one I threw in the rag bag last week?)  Ten minutes later, I stumbled out with a migraine and severely irritated nasal passages, swearing I would never, ever subject myself to that again.

But that didn't mean I was old.  Sure the music was loud and the staff all between the ages of 16 and 16 1/2.  Yes, the scent they pumped out with each beat of the music was nauseating, but that irritated lots of people, not just me.  Pretty much every parent felt the same, and they were not all old like my parents were when I was in school.

So this weekend, when we took my niece to the mall, and she wanted to go to Abercrombie Kids, my initial instinct was to recoil violently and make Tim go it alone.  Then I reminded myself that I am not old.  Besides, this was the young kids store, so surely it would be more user friendly for parents and young aunts and uncles.  So I grudgingly, but hopefully went in.

And that is when I discovered that I was old.  Very old.

Not only did they play the worst music I have ever in my life heard, they played it at ear-splitting volume through sixty-seven thousand speakers that were tucked into every nook, crevice and corner.  Standing next to a jet engine during take-off would be quieter. 

Did they not realize that while that may be acceptable in their teenager store where the kids don't want their parents helping select clothes, it was the parents who were doing the shopping here?  Seriously, who is going to give their eight-year old a credit card and say, "Go for it kid."?

I lasted as long as I could.  Honestly.  And it was the longest thirty seconds of  my life.  As I bolted for the door and the lovely, quiet heavy metal music playing throughout the mall, one of the sweet, young twelve-year-old sales clerks asked if she could help me find anything.  (Of course, she had to repeat the question several times, finally using a megaphone before I could hear her over the cacophony of sounds).

"Yes," I bellowed back, without stopping my mad dash for freedom, "my sense of hearing."

We went to GapKids and finished shopping.  Then, I picked up some brochures on retirement communities for Tim and myself.

The Key to Younger-looking Skin...Stay out of the Drugstore

My sister recently celebrated her fortieth birthday, and I had to share the ugly truth with her. Forty is not the new thirty.

At thirty, I could use one soap for both my body and my face. I didn't shed skin like a snake, and collagen was just a word, not a way of life.

Getting older turns a simple trip to the drugstore for something as seemingly innocuous as soap and moisturizer into a fact-finding mission that would put a congressional junket to shame.

Although my mother faithfully promised me when I was eleven and breaking out that my skin would clear up by the time I was eighteen, she was wrong. And so I stand in the "soap" aisle, pull out my reading glasses, and try to find something oil-free. But wait. I also have wrinkles and lines. So I need something moisturizing. But wait. If I moisturize too much, I'll break out.

And how do I know if I have wrinkles or deep wrinkles? The actress in the picture doesn't look like she has any wrinkles, so which product is she using, and was the photo taken before or after she had the plastic surgery?

And what's the difference between wrinkles and lines? Do I need three different soaps: one for acne, a second for wrinkles and yet a third for lines?

And what about an exfoliant? That seems to be a necessity. According to the bottles, if I simply exfoliate, I will uncover younger-looking skin. So maybe I should buy a tube of that. But how many layers will I have to scrub away before I don't need the wrinkle formula anymore? And will I actually have any skin left?

No matter how much the face wash does for me though, I'm not out of the woods yet. I still need to further moisturize, protect, repair, replenish and defend. Washington had to do less prep work to cross the Delaware.

First, I need to fill in the craters and crevices I wasn't able to sand-blast away with the soap by using products that tout collagen, spackle, latex or silly-putty. I have to bo-toxify my forehead, eyes and nose and mouth areas.

There are nighttime formulas and daytime formulas, which are not interchangeable. Apparently, "regenerating" can only be done under cover of darkness. The way the ingredients work is so top secret that if we were to wear them during the day and see the progress being made, it would be the end of civilization as we know it.

There are creams for the eyes, balms for the lips, and oils, gels and lotions for the face. Eyes need to be de-puffed, lips puffed, cheeks plumped, jowls firmed, eyebrows lifted and pores minimized. And all that is before you discover that you really need products that are SPF 145 as well.

Once you have dotted, blended, smoothed, soothed and coated your face to give the temporary illusion of youth (yeah, like I'm going to get carded the next time I go to a bar because my moisturizer has four ingredients ending in "-plex") it's time to move on to the body soaps.

Here too, there is a dizzying array of issues that need to be addressed. Moisturizing or "intensive" moisturizing? If I do the intensive now, what will be left for me when I'm fifty, or sixty? Where do you go from there? Jiffy Lube?

I can also exfoliate here too, but none of these are as "gentle" as the face scrubs. There are heavy duty, sand-blasting formulas with shards of razor-sharp pellets of...salt?...gravel?...steel?

Many products also boast a "firming" formula, which is good, but once again, I have serious doubts my skin will look like the model's without at least ten strategically placed rubber bands and twelve or so paperclips.

And then there are the different scents. Do I want to smell like a pear, a peach, or a mango? How about a strawberry rhubarb apple pie, or a blueberry plum cobbler? Am I supposed to eat it or wear it? That might be taking the whole inner beauty thing a bit far.

Maybe I want to smell like an orchid though or a rose. Lavender is good and it will relax me, so I can fall asleep faster. But wait. Do I want to fall asleep in the shower? Didn't I just get up? And if I choose hibiscus shower gel, will it clash with my tuti-frutti scented moisturizer? Because no matter how much "moisturizer" is in the soap, I still need to apply a thick coating of moisturizer if I don't want my skin to look like it belongs on an alligator.

Once again, I can firm, moisturize and exfoliate as well as perfume myself silly. But this product also has to be non-greasy, non-comedogenic, hypo-allergenic, fast-absorbing, clinically proven, long-lasting, organic, more filling, better tasting, low-fat, low carb, and high in fiber. Oh, and it has to give me a natural glow in three to five days. And get rid of cellulite. And promote world peace. Is that too much to ask?

By the time I have scrutinized each and every label, brow furrowed in concentration, lips pursed in thought, I have created a whole new set of lines, wrinkles and bags to be dealt with. Maybe the secret is that when you turn forty, you should just head to the nearest baking aisle and a large can of Crisco.