So, I’m getting my hair highlighted for the first time ever on Saturday.  I always swore I would “age naturally and gracefully” but then the gray hairs started to really pop out.  People have started looking up at my wiry little gray stragglers rather than at my eyes when they talk to me.  To hell with aging naturally!  I may still be able to hold on to gracefully though, if I get my act together. 

But this whole hair coloring thing has gotten me thinking.  What good is looking 30-ish when you feel 80-ish?  I have been “out of balance” for quite awhile now.  Being naturally skinny, I’ve never paid much attention to what I eat, and I’ve been able to get by without much formal exercise.  (I have used the excuses that keeping up with the kids is exercise enough…running loads of laundry up and down two flights of stairs should count…) Now as I approach 40, I feel out of whack—my body is not my own all of a sudden and it’s time to get serious.  I don’t want to be that skinny, decrepate, hunched over old lady at 70.  I want to be healthy enough and strong enough to travel the world with Zan when we are empty nesters and that’s still a good 16 years away (thank God!)  I want to be emotionally stable enough to face all my kids teenage years without becoming a closet alcoholic.  So for the first time ever (outside of my 30 total months of pregnancy) I am going to take serious care of my insides so they will be worthy of my new younger-looking outsides.

I am surrounded by people who are working hard to take better care of themselves, so there’s never been a better time than now.  It may seem a small thing, but my first order of business is drinking my quota of water…I am very naughty in this area so this will be a challenge.  And I have to break my addiction to caffeine.  SO much easier said than done.  I’m a coffee-holic.  This will be the tough one.  Adding vitamins, cutting out the crappy carbs (goodbye potato bread…I loooovvvved you…..*she whispers longingly*)  Eating my servings of fruits and veggies instead of those lovely cans of corned beef hash, frozen microwaveable hot pockets, and fries from McD’s.  And then, the true challenge for me, getting back to yoga and staying with it.  I’ve been lamenting the loss of my yoga for years now…it’s time to reclaim the peace and strength I felt back then. 

It won’t all happen at once, but I can’t continue to be passive and expect my body to take care of itself like it always has.  It’s letting me know that it needs a little help.  We all have our demons to battle, and now I enter a battle of my own.  Hair color may come in a bottle, but health doesn’t no matter what the commercials tell you.