The Chronicles Of Jessica

Let's not spend a lot of time on how long it's been since I last did a blog entry, okay? I know it's been a long time. Look, you said things, I said things - we needed some time apart. This is about moving forward.

Lately I've come to see time as this very elastic concept. You know how when you're a kid a year is just an eternity? (Obviously this is most evident when waiting for gift-related holidays to come back around.) And now that I'm firmly on the other side of thirty, with this enormous baby of my own, I feel like the months are actually flying by - I can almost see them scattering like calendar pages in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Toby will be a year old soon, and it was just yesterday that he was this tiny nugget of a thing, squinting up skeptically at me as if to say, "You took a parenting class, right? Did you do the homework? Level with me."

Last weekend I was working at a party (yes I still have my regular job but sometimes I need extra spending money for fun frivolous items, like diapers and teething biscuits) and it turned out to be a sweet sixteen party at a fancy restaurant out in Maryland. I tell you, I don't think I've ever been more acutely aware of my own mortality as I was at this party. I felt like that old lady in Titanic, like I should take off my sensible bra and throw it from the roof of the restaurant. The theme of the party was 'Alice in Wonderland' and the party planners did a gorgeous job - tons of candy in bowls all around, and an actor dressed up as the Mad Hatter. It was all so youthful and colorful and sugar coated. I just wanted to turn the clock back and be a guest at this party and flounce around with my girlfriends in a short skirt, eating candy and taking my high heels off ten minutes in.

All these girls really were so pretty and everything on them was so - high! And tight! None of them even had acne, which just made me want to punch them in their (non-turkey-like) necks. I always had pimples when I was a teenager, and oily hair that somehow also managed to be frizzy. Tonight I got down some of my old diaries so I could see what kind of stuff I was talking about and thinking about when I was that age, and the main topics are pretty much what I remember: boys and dieting. I hated the way I looked, most of the time, so if I could turn the clock back somehow, I'd also have to have some words with me-at-16. I could really give then-me some sage advice, like: "Stop being so obsessed about boys and get someone to help you pass Trig."

"Learn to read maps."

"When you move to Chicago,. don't eat at that Indian place on Belmont."

"Might as well learn to appreciate your ass because someday you'll be thirty-five and looking in the rearview mirror longingly at the way you are now."

That's it, isn't it? That's the lesson. Even though most days I feel like a worn out scruffy bathmat, someday I'll be 70 and looking back on *this* time. There has to be some way to appreciate what you have when you have it, without turning into some annoying Eckhart Tolle/The Secret/Ram Dass-vegan sort of person. What I want most is to figure out how to age gracefully, and not to let it bother me. I want to be Sally Field, as opposed to Lisa Rinna. I do not want to inject botulism into my face to paralyze the lines and wrinkles and spend thousands of dollars on a cream made of cow placenta to make my skin look younger. It's far better (and less expensive) to just practice self-acceptance. That's the plan.

In the meantime if someone wants to send me, like, a sample of that skin cream I will totally use it and be way grateful.

Also: I realize now that I was officially gypped that I did not get a sweet sixteen party, and will be making up for it by having a SICK sweet-sixty party, which will be EVEN cooler because there will be alcoholic beverages served. So suck it, rich teen hotties.

Me at 16 (give or take a few months). Not so bad.