Thursday Thirteen--signs of a mild midlife crisis

I went over to the thirteen site to see if I could pick up the code like Shannon "who used to visit and say hi" Stacy and others have. I really like that automatic Put Your Name Here thing. I couldn't find the little box thing quickly and decided I've had enough of struggling with code for a while. Almost all the words I've written this week have had brackets around them.

1. You try on something in a color you're supposed to avoid. Back in the 80s someone told you you were an autumn and should never wear orange. You buy at least five orange things.

2. You stop cursing the convertibles that go too fast down your street and start looking at their make.

3. You say random things at supper time. The point is to see if anyone notices you're not making sense. They don't.

4. You continue to say random things before and after supper. Still no one notices, so you slip in a few outrageous things. Nope. Heh. This is fun. It becomes a hobby. You try it out in public.

5. A house you've liked okay for ten years suddenly looks shabby and unpleasant. You consider knocking out a wall to bring in more light. No, don't bother with builders, I'll just do the sledge hammer work on my own.

6. You find yourself backing out of messy rooms and closing the door more often. Screw it. Let them live in a sty. You don't have time for the lectures or the cleaning or the fretting.

7. Some of those rooms include bedrooms, dining rooms, family rooms, bathrooms and kitchens.
In other words, the whole house.

8. You consider chopping off three feet of hair with nail clippers. Hey the choppy look might be kind of cool again. Where's uncle andrew when we need him?

9. You buy beauty products that you used to mock. Lip liner. Foundation. You pay full price for them, too. (but it's at Walgreens so we're not talking a scary bill. We're talking MILD midlife crisis)

10. You consider a two piece bathing suit even though you didn't even wear them when you were a teenager.

11. They're tankinis. Remember? Mild.

12. You have lots and lots of lurid dreams about men you haven't seen in years or men you've never met. The dreams usually end with you taking a train back to a home you haven't lived in for decades. No, I don't know what it means, it's just a sign, okay? Hormones? Chocolate right before bed? For the purposes of this list we'll go with hormones. And we'll point out that waking up from those dreams isn't much fun.

13. You reassure your teenaged kid that the ups and downs he's feeling are perfectly normal and, as you talk, you realize you're reassuring yourself. Good thing too because as per number 3 and 4, he's not listening anyway.