Fabulous At Forty (-Something)

Friday was our anniversary: Hubby and I have been married 27 years.

We didn't plan anything to celebrate, but MandoNut came out for the weekend, and he insisted on buying us all the ingredients for a fabulous steak dinner. He told us "Happy Anniversary," and then apologized for the fact that I had to cook my own anniversary dinner. I told him that it's a joy-- a joy-- to cook with expensive ingredients and not have to worry about the money.

And then he promptly got sick enough he couldn't eat any of it. He lay on our futon (the one he gave us) for two days, too sick to move, while life swirled around him. We doctored and nursed him and fed him, when he could eat anything, even though he felt bad about being the guy who comes to our house just to be sick.

But really. If you have to be sick, wouldn't you rather be sick where there are friendly faces to take care of you, than all alone in a cold apartment, where there's no one to fix you that soft boiled egg when a little food finally sounds good?

In other news, I finished my "unit study" of The Fashion World. I ended by watching "The Devil Wears Prada," which was interesting, and it was probably more interesting than it would have been had I not been studying fashion already. When the characters threw around designer names, I actually recognized most of them!

There was one line in the movie that caught my attention. One of the characters says something like "This industry is not about inner beauty."

In a way, that is sort of the defining quote of the movie. Fashion industry is all about outward beauty. But there seems to be no relation, except perhaps inversely, between looking good on the outside and beauty on the inside.

Which was a good way for me to wrap up my fascination with fashion, style, and beauty. I have watched a lot of stuff-- makeovers, runway videos, celebrity trends, department store "looks"-- and I balance that with, on the other hand, the scripture that says women's appearance should not be about clothing, and jewelry, and hair. Rather, our beauty should be inward.

Well, I have a hard time believing that that verse means we should be as ugly as we can, for the sake of showcasing our inward beauty! There's a chapter in Ezekiel where God describes Israel as a young girl that he took for his bride, and how he clothed her in fine, embroidered linen, and gave her jewelry--including a nose ring!

The end result of all this has been an interesting thing. I find that there has been a shift in me, somewhere. Up to now, I have been coasting on the fact that I'm small and look young for my age, and still experimenting with as much teenage style as I could get away with. I still felt eighteen. But all of a sudden, I feel like I'm ready to be a grownup. I'm ready to be forty. (Note: I'm 46, and now I'm finally ready to be 40!)


LovelyDaughter and I are planning to go shopping this week, to take a girly day, and I'm going to try on all sorts of clothes, including stuff from the womens department! (rather than just the juniors department). Anything modest gets a fair shake. Because, who knows what I might find? I might find out that I look FABULOUS in something I turned my nose up at before.