It's Never Too Late to Look Hot

I've survived a disastrous divorce (and some equally disastrous first dates). I've survived my friends' menopause madness and my daughter's nerve-racking nuptials. I'm dating Tim (a Truly Extraordinary Kisser), my career is steady and fulfilling, the kids are launched, my ex has exited, and my best friends are as close to normal as they've ever been (which, honestly, is not very close at all). Yep, as I approach the day I turn the Big Five-O, my life is really humming along-;but is it humming along to "Happy Birthday" or the theme song from Jaws? Da dum da dum: I get a new boss who subscribes to the Idi Amin School of Micromanagement. Da dum da dum: Tim's amorous intentions might be turning honorable-;or turning in another woman's direction. Da dum da dum: My ex schemes to rekindle our non-existent flame-;eiouyw! Da dum da dum: My daughter tells me that I-;sexy, youthful, Fabulous Fifty me-;will soon be a grandmother! (Really, all I wanted for my fiftieth birthday was some chocolate cake and a few Botox treatments.) Not to worry. My best friends have a strategy to pull my life back together again: a rigorous regimen of bikini waxing and belly dancing, martial arts and Myers-Briggs-;good grief! I wonder if I'll survive to fifty-one. . . ?

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It's Never Too Late to Look Hot

Chapter One

"Surprise!"

"Oh! Oh! Oh, my gosh!" I exclaimed. My hands fluttered up to my cheekbones and my eyes popped open wide in astonishment. I gave a tremulous smile, tears of appreciation glistening on my lashes. "You shouldn't have. Really." I held the pose for a breathless count of three. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three. "Okay, what did you think of that one? Spud? Alli?"

Spud moaned halfheartedly, his hairy little face studying my performance from his prone position on the bed. Despite what you are thinking, Spud is not some tattooed trucker I picked up while cruising our local 7-Eleven the previous evening. He is one of my two ever-loyal, never-obedient beagles. Spud's female counterpart, Alli, stared at me with Beagle Look Number 56: Surely this proves that humans are NOT the more intelligent species.

"Too much, you think? Maybe I should skip the 'you shouldn't have' part. What the heck does that mean anyway? 'You shouldn't have.' Of course, they should have. It's my birthday, for heaven's sake, and not just one of those 'tweener birthdays. This one turns a decade."

I was rehearsing my faux surprise in the mirror in preparation for my real surprise birthday party that night. Spud and Alli had been recruited, per a bribe of seven doggie treats each, as my personal focus group to critique the performance. Obviously, I had seriously overpaid for their services.

By the way, it is not psychologically suspect to talk to your dogs. After all, dogs are sentient beings (and perhaps a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for, given the fact that they have set up a lifestyle of sitting around scratching themselves—when they are not sleeping—while we slave to feed them, house them, and provide a generous assortment of doggie toys). And all in all, canines are definitely better listeners than most husbands (which, granted, is not a very high standard). So talking to your dogs can be very therapeutic. However, it is weird if you think your dogs talk back to you because dogs DO NOT talk. Well, except occasionally on subjects of particular interest to themselves.

(In contrast, however, I would not recommend talking to your cats. It only reaffirms their inflated, though perhaps deserved, sense of superiority. Look, they've already conned most of you into providing indoor toilet facilities for them, and feeding them cans of stuff that stink up your house for an entire week and cost more than an equal amount of caviar. Can you imagine what they might demand if they learned your innermost secrets? Diamond-studded flea collars? Oh. They already have those, too?)

Now I know you are asking yourself (not your cat), "If it's supposed to be a surprise party for her, how come she knows about it?" Well, duh. Who is ever surprised by her own surprise party? If surprise parties were truly surprising, statistically, wouldn't stunned surprisees suffer more heart attacks than the rest of the population? In which case, wouldn't surprise parties show up on the Surgeon General's list of Behaviors Dangerous to Your Health, along with everything else that could be fun? Well, surprise parties aren't on this list (though I hear that the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition recently made the cut), which goes to prove my point that no one is ever really surprised.

Anyway, isn't that an integral element of these parties? That the surprisee is never really surprised but is absolutely required to act surprised otherwise the surprisers will be hurt and disappointed (even though the surprisers know deep down in their souls that the surprisee knew about the surprise all along and therefore is only feigning surprise)? This falls within the same category as faking orgasms and pretending to like your mother-in-law's cucumber-and-cranberry Jell-O mold. (I happen to be pretty adept at both, after twenty-six years of an uninspiring marriage, which had included a mother-in-law whose cooking skills most likely killed off at least two of her five husbands.)

"Surprise!"

"Oh! Oh, my! This is so unexpected!" I tried to get my bottom lip to tremble delicately, but it looked more like the beginning of a seizure than an expression of tender emotion. (How did those fragile Victorian heroines manage to do it? And what about that graceful swooning thing? Do you suppose I could pull that off without multiple bruises and contusions? How does a good swooner position herself so that she ends up in the handsome hero's arms and not in a heap on the floor?)

You might also be asking how I could be so certain that I'd get a surprise party this particular year, since the last one thrown for me was the same year the first spaceship landed on Mars and I turned twenty-one (the two events having nothing whatsoever to do with one another). But this year was even more significant. Because this year, on this day, I officially turned Fifty Years Old.

The Big Five-O.

Five decades.

Half a century. (Maybe if you rounded up to the nearest hundred, I could qualify for a whole century.)

Wow.

But honestly, what's the big deal about turning fifty? I couldn't see that I was a whole heck of a lot different than I'd been the night before when I was a young and girlish forty-nine. As soon as I woke up on The Big Day, I had examined my body under the covers for any signs of instant decay. Nope, I still had the same tenacious clusters of cellulite (in commemoration of frequent visits to the Dairy Queen drive-through), the same undeniable stretch marks (mementos from the pregnancies for my two kids, Tyler and Jenna), the same slightly saggy boobs (the sagging was minimal since the boobs themselves had been minimal to begin with), and the same innie belly button (stuffed with a speck of lint from my flannel jammies).

Excerpted from It's Never Too Late to Look Hot by Heather Estay
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