Happy 48th birthday to my little sister!

I don't know how this happened, but she is somehow old enough to be the mother of a high-school senior and a college junior who are two of the most delightful, caring, fiercely loved young adults I know; a pillar of our community through her new job with the St. Luke’s Foundation and Unity Point and her volunteering through her church and many other civic organizations; a maker of world-class scotcharoos; an anchor to her extended family; and sister to a brother who is constantly in awe of her and everything she does. Her only real fault is she loves her terrible cat. But we’ll forgive her for that just this one day of the year to focus instead on how old she’s getting.

Throwback Wednesday: Old And Dysmorphic Edition

When you’re feeling old and invisible at your Pumped-Up Unabridged Encyclopedia of Hotness Gym, instead of working out, do something actually productive and emotionally healthy: Re-post a pic of yourself and your shirtless shoulders and your saucy instep from a long-ago gay cruise.

I thought I had a six-hour rehearsal for 9 to 5 yesterday and then a six-hour rehearsal today

But now that it’s all said (sung?) and done and I’m double-checking my math, it was six hours yesterday and a mere four hours today. My bad.

The show is really going to be spectacular. And exhausting. If my tired old ass can even keep up. And after this weekend’s (mere) ten collective hours of rehearsals, I’m dead. But it’s a happy dead.

My Facebook How Hard Has Aging Hit Me Challenge didn’t stray from the genre of headshots.

Nor of scruffy-dude-I-woke-up-like-this. And it took me 15 years, but at least I’ve stopped smirking like a wannabe-badass.

Another covert gym selfie

Another chest day so I don’t have saggy moobs when I de-shirt in Full Monty. Another gym full of holy-shit hot men who refuse to ask me to marry them.

The Gays Do Galena reunion weekend is over and all that’s left are memories, photos, surplus Diet Cokes and lingering exhaustion from staying up too late gabbing

Twenty years ago we talked about which clubs to go to, celebrated six-month-iversaries with our new boyfriends, and shopped the clearance pages of the International Male catalog for super-cute wrap shorts and terry jumpers that we could afford on our fledgling-career incomes. This weekend we celebrated double-digit anniversaries, talked about our growing invisibility both socially and professionally, used grownup words like “escrow” and “lumbar region,” and wondered how we all suddenly found ourselves hovering around the 50-year range. Here are just a few of the health and old-man problems we discussed about our lives in the last 36 hours:

• Bipolar disorder
• Falling asleep on the couch at 8 pm 
• Sharing little-known AARP discounts
• Not being able to bend over to tie our shoes
• Hearing aids
• Having to pass around a jar of salsa until one of us could finally open it
• Not being able to eat the salsa because our stomachs are having a difficult time tolerating spiciness lately
• Forgetting to write down all the good drag names we think of
• Worrying that some of the drag names we think of are perhaps too racy and inappropriate to post on Facebook
• A collective growing fear of hobos peeking in our bedroom windows 
• Lamenting over the Trivago guy’s wasted heterosexuality
• Getting Xanax and statin pills mixed up because they look the same
• Realizing we all know who Lola Falana is 
• No wifi 
• Constipation 
• Marc thinks “Boys in the Band” is a good movie
• Remembering Gary’s old boyfriend’s name
• Cancer

I’m having a delightful reunion weekend with my awesome old (WHEN DID WE ALL GET SO DAMN OLD?) friends,

but let’s take a moment to contemplate the (please vote: [] awesomeness, [] whatever the can’t-tear-your-eyes-away-trainwreck-polar-opposite of awesomeness is) of this painting in our Airbnb living room:

There comes a day after every man's 50th birthday

when he gets that dreaded call from the hospital scheduling nurse for that not-sounding-fun-at-all-no-not-even-a-little-bit carnival ride that rhymes with Tollhousebosspuppy.

I'm so excited I could just shit.

LITANY OF COMPLAINTS:

• The city of Marion was clearly and cruelly platted by M.C. Escher because the entire 5K route was uphill and yet it mysteriously finished in the same place it started.
• Every hot man at the race was accompanied by a woman and/or child.
• Many of those children totally lapped me in the last mile.
• Which, I remind you, was totally uphill.
• That one guy in the black shorts and yellow shirt would have especially looked handsome with me in our wedding photos.
• He can reach me here if you know him.
• I’d forgotten that this race had clydesdale (meaning big ol’ heavy runners) and masters (meaning just ol’ runners) divisions. Which usually means less competition for us big and ol’ folks who should get trophies just for showing up in matching shoes. But even though I qualified for both divisions and did indeed manage to show up in matching shoes and therefore mathematically should have won in those big and ol’ divisions, I came in 15th.
• I placed 248th overall, but I didn’t register a place ranking for my gender.
• Seriously. After “G Plc” on the finisher listings, I have a big fat NOTHING.
• That’s not a metaphor for anything.
• Uphill.
• The whole way.
• Hot guys lugging around the accoutrements of heterosexuality.
• I couldn’t decide between that last bullet and “Hot guys albatrossed with the accoutrements of heterosexuality.”
• So I included both.
• Cleverly.
• I really stink right now.
• Because the whole damn race was uphill.

And so it’s here: the last night of my 40s

I feel like that ominous, grainy photo of the Titanic sailing away from the White Star Dock in Southampton that’s always accompanied by a caption saying something about it being the last time the ship would ever see land. I was born at 6:30 am, so when I close my eyes tonight it will be the last time I see my bedroom as a 49-year-old because by the time I wake up I’ll be 50.

Turning 50 is bugging me WAY beyond the expected complaints of a certain age milestone making someone feel old. I know I’m not the only person to turn 50 or to feel profoundly older because of it ... and I’m certainly not the first person to complain about it. But 50 brings with it a mathematical sense of mortality that even 49 didn’t: I’m well over halfway done living my life. But I don’t feel like I’ve even STARTED living it by most measures. There’s so much about living that I worry I haven’t even started thinking about, much less doing ... even though I’ve consciously and purposefully been living by the motto “someday just began”—meaning someday is here, so stop putting things off (like tattooing “someday just began” inside your arm where you can easily see it) until some far-off-procrastination someday—for well over two decades.

So in that spirit—and flying in the face of the defeated spirit of the 50-year-old man I desperately don’t want to be—I’ve mapped out a pretty rigorous Summer Of Running Away From Being 50 that includes multiple vacations to favorite destinations including New York City and Washington, D.C., and multiple races including two half marathons, the second of which winds through the parks of my beloved Walt Disney World in November.

So tomorrow’s my new someday. The beginning of my sixth decade. The dawn of my summer-long celebration of that milestone. The onyourmarksgetsetGO! of my sprint toward everything that awaits me between here and 60.

And the moment I wake up tomorrow, it’s only just begun.

#HowToTurn50

These creaky old knees don’t mess around at dance rehearsal

I'm still not used to being The Old Guy

I usually have an innate ability to know when my gym is completely empty so I pretty much always work out alone. But I just survived a self-esteem slaughterhouse of a workout surrounded by six 20something guys who were not only all insanely muscular but they all knew each other and all talked to each other and completely ignored the old guy who was slowly being transported back to The Land of Crippling High School Insecurities.

But I used it to push myself through a more brutal than normal arm workout. And then I rushed to the safety of my car to photograph the proof of it before my pump deflated.

Getting old can really mess with you sometimes.

Happy Gay Uncles' Day to me

That's OK, niece and nephew who are no longer in the will; I'll post my own celebratory sparkle glitter flower kitty gif. Even though I can't figure out how to make the gif's sparkle feature work like the way I found it on Google as only a tech-savvy younger relative could.

Sigh.

Passive aggressive

The first horseman of the apocalypse has stomped its fearsome hooves and bellowed its ominous whinny; my investment guy just recommended that I downgrade my investment strategy from aggressive to moderate. Which is what people do to lessen the short-term risk of their financial holdings when they're about to become old and retire and die die die like a dead person who's died.

If you need me, I'll be standing here with one foot in this grave.

Giggle. Hair toss.

So I discovered to my abject horror this morning that every pair of dress pants that I own but one -- that's EVERY PAIR BUT ONE -- no longer fits me. And not in the good way. So after my desperately extra-vigorous workout this afternoon I went to my friendly neighborhood JCPenney to upgrade to some big-boy dress pants, all of which are 60% (give or take) off right now in case you're in the market for new dress pants. Unfortunately, I needed new dress pants that were 60% (give or take) bigger. Which was a 100% (give or take) blow to my ego. But as I waddled up to the checkout counter feeling very dejected and frustrated, the very cute, very friendly, very too young to remember "Sunday in the Park with George" clerk greeted me with a huge smile and chatted my ear off and laughed way too enthusiastically at my feeble attempts at humor. And I'm either way too out of practice to tell for sure or for sure way too delusional to know better, but I think he was ... flirting with me. Which would have lifted my spirits but I'm old and cynical and now too fat for all my dress pants but one so I didn't buy one second of his couldn't-possibly-be flirting. Not one. Not even enough to write a huge post about it on Facebook. Nope. Not one. (Giggle. Hair toss.)

But! I went right from Girth & Flirt to get my hair cut and the haircut lady cut my hair exactly the way that I like it. Which is a concrete, measurable way to lift my saggy, droopy, every-pair-but-one spirits.

And there's no way I'm going back to Girth & Flirt seventeen more times this weekend to see if he asks to check my ID twice again. Because checking my ID twice for one purchase and saying my last name out loud is probably legally-mandated store policy. Besides, going back would just look desperate and awkward. (Giggle. Hair toss.)