No actual caterpillars were harmed in the making of this column.

When I was in my 20’s, I weighed four pounds. If I ate something huge, like a whole apple, I still only weighed four pounds but I had a noticeable pooch…sort of like one of those snakes that can swallow a whole pig. You could actually follow the lump as it moved through my digestive system.

Even though I sounded like I came from North Carolina, I looked like I had been rescued from Ethiopia. (By a man who was way too old for me and just every bit as loving as a pig-swallowing snake.)

When I got pregnant with my daughter, I weighed a whopping 103 pounds and was absolutely convinced I was the world’s fattest pregnant woman. That probably had something to do with constantly being told I was the world’s fattest pregnant woman.

Little known fact: pig-swallowing snakes can talk.

Now into my forties, I am convinced I am the fattest non-pregnant woman alive. I often dream of the day I get a phone call that I’ve won a liposuction contest that I forgot I entered at the mall. I’d love to go into the hospital looking like me and come out looking as if I don’t eat something post haste, I’m going to pass smooth out. Just once I’d like to have someone tell me I look hungry.

At this age though losing weight is teetering a fine line. Lose just one pound too much and your skin looks all loose and crinkly. Nothing creeps me out more than somebody’s loose and crinkly skin flapping in the breeze.

Things that flap should always be covered when in public. That’s why I demand Mr. Man wear underwear.

It isn’t just my weight that bothers me. It’s my old lady face. It once looked like a piece of smooth porcelain. Now it’s more like a piece of unpolished marble. As a particularly nasty allergy season has settled upon the Midwest, my beauty has only been enhanced by my flaming red & scabby nose and my insanely puffy, blood shot eyes.

I look as if I’ve been in an actual fist fight with someone who is much better at it than I am. (Which could be anybody because I hit like a girl.)

The other morning in an effort to distract the eye of the beholder away from my enormous Rudolph nose, I actually put on false eyelashes. First of all, I may not have many good things going for me, but I do actually have my own eyelashes so I didn’t really need tiny eye wigs.

And second of all, women who have to wear extremely strong glasses to see their own face have no business trying to put glue on something they will stick on their eyes. I can’t even see to tie my own shoes without glasses any more. Before I was finished, I had plastered long, black eyelashes all over my face. I looked like I seriously needed to be waxed by a very aggressive Russian woman.

I’m happy to report however that when I finally got them on my actual eyes, they did serve as the distraction I’d wanted.

No one noticed my nose, but some mentioned perhaps my eyes were so red because I had a serious allergic reaction brought on by wearing caterpillars on my eyeballs. Oh and one lady offered me her tweezers because apparently I’d missed a stray glued on hair that was blowing in the breeze just above my lip.

If when God created women he decided in his ultimate wisdom that when we enter mid-life we should look more and more like somebody’s Grandmother with each passing day, then I suppose I could suck it up and live with it. But, I really think it should have been at least equal among the sexes.

I mean come on. Men typically grow more handsome as they get older. The salt and pepper hair, the distinguished lines in their faces, the additional digits in their checking account balance. It’s not fair!

You never hear a man softly crying in the bathroom every morning as he applies spackle and KILZ to his face before going to work. You never see a man saying no to cheesecake because he knows what cheesecake looks like on his ass. And I am absolutely certain that the reason Lee doesn’t make press on beards is because no man would be caught dead super- gluing fake hair to his face.

Or would they? Dibs on the press on beard patent.


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