My period showed up this week on what would have been day 43.
I was talking to Nick about her late arrival and started laughing, because honestly, what else can you do? When you’re younger, a period is a rite of passage — you run toward it, through it, around it. It’s just part of the everyday machinery. But at 45, that part of me has slowed down considerably. Sometimes she takes a detour. Sometimes she just sits on the side of the road, resting.
The image that came to me was the old lady fish from SpongeBob, shuffling across the crosswalk yelling “WHAT?! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” — taking her sweet time, no particular urgency, no place to be. And by the time she finally showed up, she had fully morphed into the aged version of Miley Cyrus riding a wrecking ball. Slow start. Dramatic entrance.
I laughed. Out loud. Because at this point, that’s the only appropriate response.
A few nights ago I left the gym after researching Kinesio tape for my cesarean scar — something to add stability so I can actually engage my core properly again. Walking through the parking lot, deep in my own head, I spotted a beautiful white Escalade. I look at cars sometimes, not because I’m unhappy with my van, but because I hear my dad’s voice every single time: “Cars are the worst way to spend your money as an investment.” He’s not wrong. Imagine having an extra $700 a month freed up without a car payment.
I was mid-thought when the Escalade backed up to pull out — and I saw it. The entire back bumper and chassis, duct taped. Six or seven enormous pieces of silver tape holding that beautiful, expensive vehicle together.
I audibly laughed climbing into my mom van. I could be a duct taped Escalade, I thought. I will be a duct taped Escalade.
The things we do for stability after giving so much of our bodies over to creating life. We become an expensive vehicle, patched with duct tape, because sometimes the actual repair costs more than we can manage. So we stabilize. We get the Kinesio tape. We do the pelvic floor work. We add the extra layer of support and call it good enough for now.
But here’s the thought that’s been sitting with me since: are our bodies actually like cars? Because the comparison falls apart in one important place. We maintain cars to protect resale value. There is no next owner for this body. I am not maintaining myself so someone else gets a good deal later. There’s no resale value to protect. There’s just the engine, and the fact that it has to keep running, and the fact that maintenance is not optional. It’s mandatory.
Here’s what I see constantly though: the entire conversation around women aging is about improvement. Smooth the wrinkles. Fill the cracks with Botox. Call it “aging gracefully” while quietly erasing every sign that you’ve actually lived. It’s less maintenance and more retrofitting — swapping out the original parts for newer ones and hoping nobody notices the model year changed.
What I would love to see more of is women being treated like a vintage VW Bug.
Not retrofitted. Not swapped out for newer parts. Just cleaned up versions of the same original parts. Maintained, not replaced. I’ve been car shopping lately, and it’s wild what that actually looks like in the market: a newer VW with high mileage and zero maintenance history sells for two to three times less than a classic 60s Bug with maybe 12,000 original miles on it. The older one, cared for, is worth more than the newer one neglected. Mileage isn’t the variable that matters. Maintenance is. Originality, kept up, is worth more than new and run down.
I want to be the well-maintained vintage Bug. Not the retrofitted Escalade pretending to be something it isn’t. Just the original parts, cleaned up, cared for, still running well past when anyone expected.
A few other things from this week, since we do check-ins at the end of our parenting week and some of it’s worth sharing.
Apparently someone is threatened by me with zero effort on my part. Nick asked how it felt to win at something I wasn’t even competing in. I told him — I’m no longer in competition with anyone’s insecurities. That’s not my race to run.
It’s unfortunate when someone’s insecurity outweighs their ability to move forward and see the joy in their own life. That they’d rather seek out information to use against someone than just live their own. Some of that has meant necessary blocks on social media, even when it wasn’t a choice I wanted to make. But I’m proud of the work I do. The blog. The balms and oils I make on the side. I have nothing to be ashamed of, and I’m not going to spend my energy pretending otherwise.
On the positive side — an update from last week’s ranting: Nick has started coming to the gym with me in the afternoons, and it has genuinely helped with Evelyn’s ChildWatch transition. He drops her off, I drop her off, she watches both of us go and both of us come back. That consistency is doing something for her that I couldn’t do alone.
I’m still working through the real struggle with Evelyn, which isn’t actually about discipline — it’s about balance. Giving her attention. Communicating with her. Letting her see me work, even if it doesn’t look like Daddy’s work. And her accepting that balance instead of dissolving into a tantrum every time it shows up.
That’s the real fight. When she starts stomping, screaming, completely losing her marbles the second I say no — it’s rarely about the no itself. It’s about her not yet accepting that I can be present and working at the same time. So I have her sit on my lap while I type. I let her “help” build Pinterest pins. I take the breaks to blow bubbles and completely lose whatever thought I was mid-sentence on. I am trying so hard not to lose my patience in the moments she simply will not accept any separation from me at all — even when that separation is two feet away at the same kitchen table.
And then there’s the thing I’m actually sitting with now: at the end of this week we head to our annual family trip to the lake. This year feels different, and I’m trying very hard not to get ahead of myself about what next year will look like.
Next summer, one of Nick’s two daughters graduates. That’ll be his trial run of what his last year of coparenting could eventually look like — one down, one still ahead. For me, this is genuinely my last year with my own senior. My original last baby. She will plan her life away from here, because that is exactly who she is, and I wouldn’t want her to be anything else. After this year, my coparenting chapter closes completely while his continues for one more round.
My sole focus right now is enjoying this last year with my senior and with my preschooler at the same time — two completely different stages of goodbye and hello happening under one roof. The landscape at that lake is going to look different next year, even if the water and the sand stay exactly the same.
Another journey begins. I’m not entirely sure what my footing looks like without the chaos of planning for a houseful of kids. But I’m trying to be present for this version of the lake before I start grieving the next one.
What’s something about aging — body, family, identity, all of it — that’s caught you off guard lately? Drop it below. I want to know I’m not the only vintage Bug in the lot.
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