I Don't Give a Good God Damn...

I really didn't understand my grandmother's favorite saying, "I don't give a good God damn" until recently. I think it has to do with this milestone 50th birthday staring me in the face.

My grandmother was way ahead of her time. She was French, arrogant as hell, and lived life exactly the way she wanted. She would tell my grandfather that everything cost twice as much as it really did so he would give her more $$, and then when she'd saved enough, she'd head off to Paris, leaving him with a bunch of frozen dinners. Needless to say, he was not pleased. She would purse her mouth the way French people do, arch her eyebrows, and say, "I don't give a good God damn..."

How many of us can say we live that freely? As we women get older, though, we do begin to shed some of those constraints that have kept us grounded. I guess that's the philosophy of those red hat ladies. We just don't seem to care as much anymore what other people think. For example, we start to pay more attention to comfort than style. We're not as obsessed with dieting as we once were. We clean house every so often, dumping energy vampire and high maintenance friends who just aren't worth our limited stores of energy. I guess that's the tradeoff for aging. Our bodies start to succumb to gravity and head south, but damn are we liberated! I think I'm going to like this phase.... Yup, I don't give a good God damn!