What's worse getting fatter or wrinkly?

On Friday, I read a great author interview on my friend Camy's blog. The author is Diann Hunt and her book is Hot Flashes and Cold Cream. The main characters are middle-aged women, but they are dealing with the same issues that all women deal with like obsessing about our looks, and how to build up low esteem. In the interview, Diann talked about one day washing her face, and then looking up in the mirror and seeing her grandmother's face. I totally related to that scene. Instead of seeing my grandmother's face, I saw my mother's semblance. Every one of us has that morning where we stare back at the mirror and realize that time is leaving deeper marks on our once youthful mug. The wrinkles are getting deeper, the hair is turning bluer, and the cheeks don't snap back like they used to, in fact they are noticeably sagging south bound. Yikes!

A couple weeks ago, I got on the scale, and was slapped with the reality that I have gained 15 pounds in the last year. And admittedly, all those extra pounds are "I got a man now so I can stop exercising and watching what I eat." Matt has fallen into the same trap too, so we've just kind of gotten fatter and comfy together. Not that it's an excuse, but why keep on training when you're not competing anymore. It sounds rather pathetic, but everyone at least one time in their life has been snared by this train of delusion.

Never thinking that the scale experience was horrifying enough, I went to the mall this weekend to try on clothes, and found that I had gone up not one but 2 pant sizes. Holy frenzied ego busters, Bulge-man. I felt like a ginormous, puffy, sausage trying to squeeze into my lost youth. Now 15 pounds extra doesn't sound like it should bump you up 2 whole pant sizes, but for me, extra weight goes straight to my gut and waist, and that's it. I am a classic Apple, with a pudgy belly, and stick legs. My thighs and ass never fill up with fat. Uh-uh. All the fat is restricted to the middle quadrant.

So this morning while looking in the mirror, I asked myself, which is worse, the realization that I have let myself go, and now have to wear clothes that are 2 sizes bigger than I have worn in over 10 years, or the fact that I am starting to look my age, and soon will not be able to get away with wearing a mini skirt because I'll look like the passe hag who is desperately trying to cling onto youth? I am obscurely woeful of both realizations, but that is a facet of reality from where I am sitting at the moment.