Lately I don't even know what to write about. I feel like crap today because I drank three beers last night, which was way too much for me. I'm such a lightweight now. There was a time when three beers would've been an appetizer for me. I was drinking like cases of beer back in the day. Well, I don't know if it was really cases, but it was a shit ton of beer, just sucking them down like fruit punch. But now, three beers gets me pretty loopy and feeling like ass the next day. I still went to counseling this morning, then work, then the gym where I did personal training and cardio, and now back to work again. So I'm not fucking up as far as my responsibilities go, but as far as my general well-being, I'm fucking up. It's just not worth it. It's not that fun. For instance, last night, HAM and I were watching the first episode of Mad Men, and int this episode, one of the guys tells his fiancee, "Of course I love you, I'm giving up my life to be with you, aren't I?" This made HAM laugh, so I jumped on him immediately and gave him a hard time the rest of the night for laughing at this guy's joke about marriage being a trade-in for your life. HAM knows I want to get married. Ever since we first met and he asked me what I wanted, I said I wanted to get married. He said he didn't believe in marriage, and he explained to me that he didn't need the government interfering in his personal life. I understand that. I don't need that, either, but I still want to be married. It doesn't have to be legally bound, that's really not the point for me. I just want the commitment. I want him to declare his undying love for me and make a promise to stay with me no matter what. I don't need the court document, I just need the personal statement during a ceremony where I get to wear a pretty dress and there are witnesses, like his mother. So for me, when he jokes about marriage being the end of his life, I take it seriously. I'm a good girl. I'm pretty, funny, smart, and I'm a great cook. I mean, I have my flaws like anyone, but as far as girls go, there's lots of guys who would feel lucky to have me, and I think HAM should want to marry me before someone else tries to steal me away. There's these two guys who work in the same office park as my counselor, and every time I walk by, they always stare at me. Today, they finally decided to say hello to me and I found out that they work for an engineering recruiting firm that allows them to travel to several different countries. They are both young men, fine looking, with careers, and I know they think I'm cute. Of course, I'm not interested in these guys, I love HAM and only want to be with HAM, but the point is, it's not like I'm some loser that no one else would want. I'm attractive to people. And once they finally talk to me, they discover that I'm not a bimbo, I'm actually interesting to talk to and funny and not at all stuck up. I'm someone that guys want to get to know. And HAM is young. He's only 24 and I'm 31, so I worry he's not ready to commit to me, and I could spend years with him waiting for him to want to get married, and in the end he decides he wants more experience or I'm not right for him, and he leaves me when my expiration date has long since passed. In a lot of people's eyes, my expiration date already passed since I'm over 30 (for some men, 25 is the cut off). It's not that I believe in these expiration dates - I think they're offensive - but they're a reality for a lot of people. Women's stock goes down as steadily as men's stock goes up. As men progress throughout their lives, working their way up corporate ladders or what have you, they continue to increase their value to the opposite sex, meanwhile, women get older and accumulate more fat, wrinkles, and gray hair, making them less and less valuable with every passing day. It is sad, but it is a fact that cannot be denied and it is true in almost every culture. Men are visual creatures and they desire beautiful women. It may not be all that matters, but the fact is, it does matter. HAM loves the way I look today. He loves my big butt and small waist, he loves my makeup and hair and he loves my tan and nails. I can keep up a lot of this stuff, but there is the inevitable aging process that will change the shape of my body, turn my hair gray, and produce fine lines and wrinkles on my face. I want him to love me enough to love me when I'm old. I want him to look at me and not just see a hot chick with a nice ass, but I beautiful woman who he wants to grow old with, who he loves so much that I would be beautiful to him no matter how many years have passed or how many gray hairs I have. I have been with people who have said they felt that way about me before, and I don't really know if it was true or not, but I know there are some men out there who truly love their middle-aged or elderly wives, and I think I deserve a man that loves me that much, too. A man who doesn't see my gray hair or wrinkles, but sees the real me and thinks I'm amazing, stunning, and the only girl he'd ever want. That's how I see him. I imagine him twenty years from now, HAM the man instead of HAM the baby. I see him being just as sexy, if not more so. I see him always being the guy I want to be with more than anyone else in the world, no matter if he develops a gut or stays in perfect shape. Whether he loses his pretty blonde hair or keeps it. I don't care, because I love him as a person, not as a good-looking person. I've never even been with a good-looking guy before I met him. All my boyfriends were toothless, fat, or bald. Or all three. I don't care about looks on a man. I care more about their sense of humor than anything else. I need someone who makes me laugh, and who thinks I'm funny, too. HAM does that, too. He thinks men are always funnier than women, as I've mentioned before, but he does think I'm funny, and I think he's funny, too. But I do have this fear that he'll only love me as long as I'm pretty, and one day if I'm not pretty enough, he'll either stay with me out of obligation but long for someone younger and more attractive, or he'll just leave me. Because when I met him I was physically perfect and since then I've gained like seven pounds. My stomach isn't perfectly flat anymore and I've had months of being pale instead of tan, or I've been too poor to afford to get my nails done so they grow out and look ratty for a while. I'm just afraid how I look is extremely important to him because I looked perfect when he met me and he's really into physical appearance. He loves Katy Perry and he was totally into the idea of my getting breast implants (which didn't pan out partly because of cost, and partly because I read all of the literature that they give you when you go in for a consultation and it scared the crap out of me). Katy Perry has those giant milky globes and I have just slightly more than a twelve-year-old. I often joke that I should shop in the training bra section. So I don't know, maybe I'm just insecure, as my counselor says. I know I'm insecure, but I don't think it's all in my head, I think HAM really has an aversion to unattractive women and wouldn't want me if I was fat or ugly. And I can control fat, and I'm not ugly, but I can't stop time. I will get old, I have no say in the matter. I just hope he'll fall more in love with me and see me as beautiful as I get older instead of just old. I know I have an expiration date, I just hope he'll still want to drink me once I've gone sour.

I have too many fat days, ugly days, low self-esteem days, I usually call them. I have fine hair that grows around my upper lip and chin, as do most girls (even the really hot ones) and I used to go to the greatest wax girl ever, but then she got pregnant and decided to take a six month maternity leave. Didn't she think about how this would affect me? Well, anyway, when she took leave, so did I. Once you develop a relationship with a waxer, you really don't want to start all over again. So I have been fending for myself for the last few months, using tweezers here and there, occasionally browsing the websites of local spas, but never making an appointment. Well, the hot girl from the gym, EP, invited us to a barbeque, so I decided I had to do something more thorough. When the sun shines on a unwaxed face and you catch it in just the right light, it's frightening. I didn't want to be that girl, especially around a hottie and all her stupid hot friends. So I used this cheapo wax from the drugstore, and it looked great at first, but a few days later (we never made it to the barbeque by the way), my skin developed a reaction to it. So now I havebig, red, painful bumps on the sides of my mouth. I've already been feeling bloated and fat lately, and now on top of the poor body image, my face is all fucked up. Makeup just makes it look even more ridiculous. I sometimes feel like I missed the day they taught hot girl grooming 101. For years I was unaware that hair grows on top of your toes, above your lip, on your chin, and down the center of your belly from your navel to the area where it is obvious that hair grows (and I didn't know that people groomed that region either). I didn't know I was supposed to shave those areas or have them waxed, and even if I had known, I wouldn't have known who to turn to. I didn't know that I shouldn't bite my nails, or chew the skin around my nails, I didn't know that box hair dye from the grocery store would turn my hair orange or green, depending on it's base. I didn't know what size bra I was, I didn't know that glitter and dark roots made me look cheap. I didn't know how to look good. And now that I know how I'm supposed to look, I don't know how to achieve the desired result. I work out five days a week, sometimes twice a day. I spend inordinate amounts of money on my hair and nails, and I used to spend it on waxing too. I am constantly buying new foundations and eyeliners, mascaras and face masks, trying to get the skin I want, the hair I want, the nails I want, the body I want, the face I want, the youth I wish I could recapture. And that's the worst part of all: even if I achieve the beauty results that I'm always desperately chasing, youth trumps maintenance every time. When I had hair on my toes, dark roots, glitter spread all over my chest, an ill-fitting bra, a half-shirt, bell-bottoms and bare feet, I had one major thing working in my favor. I was young. I was hot because I was young. It just doesn't take as much work when your young. Throw on whatever, you don't need makeup or fancy clothes or a waxed upper lip or a mani/pedi, all you need is your fresh little face and your perky little tits, and a spark in your naive little eyes. The older we women get, the more we try to recapture that effortlessness, but it takes so much damn effort! It's so expensive and time-consuming to look as if "Oh, I just threw this on. I didn't even have time to do my makeup this morning." Skin gets rougher and starts to droop, fine lines creep around the corners of your eyes, a slight wrinkle appears in the center of the forehead, and veins, you know, the ones your mother has, start prutruding from your hands. Time cannot be turned back. It's just one more instance of accepting the current situation. I can't get younger, so I have to work with what I have. Learn how to manage my fading beauty. Learn how to accept that it's someone else's turn in the spotlight, but the spotlight will fade on those girls as well. As we fade, the spotlight fades. It sucks not being the hottest girl in the room. Now the hottest girl in the room is EP. She's 22.