High Maintenance Chick

Yesterday I turned 51--guess I should re-name this blog something along the lines of "Fumbling thru My 50s." Looking back on this last year, I'm not sure I've learned much to guide me through my next five decades. I have, however, changed. I have become a High Maintenance Chick.

I guess I took my first faltering steps toward high-maintenance chickdom a decade ago, when I first started coloring my hair. So it begins. A moment of impulse, a sudden desire for a bit more vibrancy, and there you are, committed to a lifetime of horrendously high beauty salon bills for roots touch-ups, highlights, lowlights, middle-of-the-road lights, plus of course all the necessary accompaniments like gels and waxes.

I might, however, have confined my maintenance to the region above my neck had it not been for my niece. It's all her fault. It was Anne who lured me on to the fast lanes of the high maintenance road by convincing me to join her for a spa pedicure. Pedicures are the crack of Chickdom. Once you've looked down and caught sight of your toes winking colorfully back up at you, callouses all filed away, heels glowing softly, you're done for, caught, addicted. From regular pedicures to weekly manicures is hardly a jump, more of a quick hop, really. Your toes look so good, it dawns on you that the time has come to stop gnawing on your nails and nibbling on your cuticles; you long to present to the world a hand not adorned with bleeding stumps.

It was also Anne who convinced me of the delights of bikini waxing. Once you've endured the hot waxing of Down There, slapping some more of the hot stuff on the brows and chin just seems, well, required. And what's the point of sporting shapely brows if they're so blonde no one can admire them? One must book a brow tint. And as long as one is having one's brows tinted, well, why not dye those long, thick, but blonde eyelashes as well? Suddenly, freedom from mascara seems a right rather than a luxury.

And that's it. If you're having your eyelashes tinted, that's it. You are officially a High Maintenance Chick.

Or at least, I am. Somehow, much to my surprise and discomfort, I find that I'm a 51-year-old HMC. This was not in The Plan. But the thing is, so many things have happened that were not in The Plan--some of them terrific, but many of them Decidedly Not--despite my best efforts to be Very Very Good. So now I'm not being good. Instead, I'm just feeling good. No plan. Just a lot of maintenance.