Monday, January 17, 2011

Holy Mackerel!

As a few of my kind friends pointed out in my previous post, my time line of events was missing one event. Yes, as it turns out I forgot to mention that between Thanksgiving and Christmas I had a birthday. I am pretty sure that had it been just another run of the mill birthday, my kind friends would have not even brought it up. However, since I turned 40, yes 40, 40, 40, 40...they felt compelled to not let it slide. Yes, kind friends indeed. Like Mary, my dear friend who is like 24 and to add insult to injury looks like she is 17. Yah, just wait Mary, if I can still see to type by the time you turn 40 I'll be ratting you out too! And then there was Linda, my faithful lifelong friend since jr. high. She ratted me out, well because she has lots she could blackmail me with, and also she shares in my pain as her 40th birthday was 3 weeks after mine.

40. There it is all out in the open now.

I am sure if you had asked me 20 years ago, my opinion of 40 was practically one foot in the grave.

Now, I would honestly not want to go back to 20 for all the money in the world. OK maybe better said this way, I would not mind having my 20 year old hottie tottie body combined with my 40 year old brain and heart.

I feel like I am the real me now. Real experiences to learn and grow from, 40 years of beloved friendships, always the possibilities of new friendships along the way, cherished memories and my heart full of the people I love.

Life is great at 40.

The best perk of growing older as I see it, is that you can speak your mind. I plan on losing more and more of my filter as each year passes. Life is too short. By the time I am 90, they will then be chalking it up to senility and that is fine with me.

My other thought on growing old is that you MUST maintain a cool haircut. Once the style goes, it's all over people. Again, at 90 while I am spouting off my crazy opinion, I may only have 20 hairs on my head but they will have a sassy cut. Imperative.

My good (over 40) friend LoriusedtohaveablogEaton and I often discuss hair via random text messages. It is a highly intellectual friendship we share, don't waste your time trying to understand it. Anyhoo, here is a run down of our worthy opinions....Kathie Lee Gifford clearly needs to cut that nonsense off. Every female on any and every version of "The Real Housewives" need to cut off their over processed manes. And finally Lori threw Sandra Bullock's long do at the Golden Globes last night under the bus. Just so you know.

So, back to me and my 40 year old self. I have a good haircut, a quickly diminishing filter and I am healthy (thank God for that). I had my yearly physical last week and chose to see the nurse practitioner as it is SO much easier to get in and see her, rather than wait 3 months for an appt. with my dr. and then wait in the exam room for an hour.

She made me get lab work done. I am a needle phobe and my veins roll. Blood draws are never a barrel of monkeys for me. I'll save the story for another day about how they had to stick me twice to get a vein and I was on the verge of passing out, sweating like Lindsey Lohan in church. The little lab tech was screaming out for someone to get me some orange juice. While I was screaming just find a vein you dimwit! I inherited this needle weakness from my father. Thanks Dad! Well, I guess I just told you the story that I was going to tell you another day. Nevermind.

Anyway, my lab results came back with a vitamin D deficiency and bad cholesterol at 108. So I am now taking vit. D and Omega 3, for my cholesterol. I do feel the nurse practitioner is being a little over zealous with the high cholesterol thing, I mean the American Heart Association hardly sneezes at 108. Better safe than sorry I guess. Do you know what Omega 3 consists of? Mackerel, anchovy and sardine. Blech. The 2 soft gels I have to choke down daily are the size, and coincidentally smell similar to that, of a small rodent.

I believe the cholesterol thing is also hereditary, thanks for another one Dad! I mean I honestly do eat low fat and exercise. OK so, I was running 3 miles a day for the first 9 months of 2010, until the day we boarded our plane to Mexico in September. You know, to eliminate as much beach jiggle as possible. Have not run another step since then. Well, unless you count the occasional spontaneous footrace I challenge blonde rascal to. Gotta show that punk who is boss every now and again.

Then after Mexico hubs and I did sort of a clean eating program for 3 weeks and I lost 12 lbs. All of this to say come on cholesterol, cut me some slack! I feel confident I will beat it though, what with my mackerel/anchovy/sardine breath and all.

Now that you have wasted 3 minutes of your life, that you can never get back, by reading all of this complete nonsense, I will stop.

Do come back though. I am taking a photography class AND joined up with a quilting group that I am sure you are dying to hear about! Hopefully for your sake this will be the last time I speak of Mackerel and good haircuts, in the same blog post anyway.

Now leave me a comment and tell me how you feel about getting blood drawn.

Cheers to 40!

6 comments:

kristen lewis said...

All I can say is that I am in for truly good times if my filter continues to deteriorate! Imagine me at 90! Yikes!!!

Angie said...

Whaaaaaat??! 40?! And you were just going to let this pass quietly in the night??! No way you're getting off that easy sister. This calls for celebration! I hereby decree that you must find an day in February to make the trek to the 806 for a par-tay! I mean it! Find a day! Otherwise some of us just might show up on your doorstep! After we call for directions, that is.

Mary said...

I LOVE YOU GIRLS!! Gee, Brooke, thanks for that shout out about MY age.....too bad it's not true. Haven't been 27 for quite awhile now!!! And yes, I have to admit I did think of Kristen when you were mentioning your filter! tee, hee

And Angie is also right! Get yourself over here, or we will have to crash in on you. (If we can find you!!)

Love you girl, and hope your 40th was awesome! By the way, I didn't mention anything about which birthday you had, just that you had one!

Vintage Chicken said...

Love the new look to the blog!
I can totally relate to how turning 40 feels, it was almost a liberating feeling for me - now that I'm almost 42, I'm ready to start going backwards in years! LOL

You look fabulous !

Lori E. said...

Oh my stars, I am so far behind on all your blogging. I am thrilled that I was mentioned!! Makes me feel less like an enigma, even though I clearly am. And for the record YOU are the one that thinks the long hair has to go....I give you a hard time about it. Sandra B.'s hair at the Golden Globes DOES need to goooooo. Your cholesterol is NOT high. Isn't it over 200 that is high. I am way over 40 and I know this. Do not go to doctor's that smoke crack.....REALLY. The fish oil will help with your aging brain though. What filter do you have? The whole blog just made me LAUGH out LOUD!!!! You rock Brookie!

Meredith said...

Oh my...I have been away far too long! And I got the SAME diagnosis for my last physical. Am taking niacin, prescrip D, and the fish oil tablets too. I am baffled b/c my diet was way better all this past year. Lets beat this stupid cholesterol together!! LOL Happy 40!