Cocoa With Christine

           As some of you know, I have 9 months left in my 30s. Some of my friends have said that when they turned 38 and 39, they just "considered themselves 40". NOT ME! I'm still in my 30s and I'm hanging on for dear life!                     According to Wikipedia, the United States life expectancy for an average woman runs at 80 years old. That means that when I turn 40, I'll be closer to the day of my death than from the day of my birth! I'M A GONER!!! I'M OVER THE HILL AND SLEDDING DOWN!!!    <uncontrollable sobbing>                     Recently I went to a party with a lot of friends who were mostly in their 40s. One of the guys forgot his reading glasses, so it seemed to me like the rest of the ENTIRE party offered to share their reading glasses! Is this how people socialize when they get old? "You forgot your dentures? Here, borrow mine!"                      Aside: Being that my parents in their 60s and 70

                 My mother in law (may she rest in peace) was a colorful, loving woman who loved to shower us with expensive, obscure gifts: an air purifier advertised as being strong enough to purify the air of a passenger jet, a huge mint green comforter (to remind us to brush our teeth?), an ice cream maker, etc.. . . I suppose the ice cream maker wasn’t that obscure, except that every time I went to buy ingredients to use it, I ended up wanting to buy ice cream .                 Every once in a while, she’d hit gift giving on the nose, and this one time, she bought me a Cartier watch. Having only bought $10 wristwatches from Best, I had no idea what a Cartier watch was.   This was evidenced by the fact that I pronounced the “r” in Cartier.   The correct way to pronounce Cartier is “Car-tee-yay”.   But you can’t say the “yay” like a Yankee, you need to add a soft “h” sound at the end.   If designers would just spell their names properly, like Shanelle, Shhhshaydough and Carteeya

                 Since Won Bin is working so much more, our seasons on the baseball field are on hold, which is fine with me because now I can avoid awkward situations like having   guests over and finding my son's athletic cup on the dining table.             "Haha!" I say, pretending like it's not a normal thing.             I do miss the fun spectrum of parents that I get to meet at the games- all the way from the laid back ones to the psycho ones.   You know the psychos because usually they're the ones who are yelling at their kids with the same intensity as the Hulk,   "JIMMY!   JIMMY!   GEEEET THE BALL!   GET THE BALL!   JIMMY!"   As if someone has pressed the slo mo button on the kid, you can see the light bulb slowly forming in Jimmy's mind, "Huh.   I think they're calling me. Maybe I ought to get the ball?" Then the psychos start screaming with blood spilling out of their pores, "THROW THE BALL!   THROW THE BALL! NOO

             If I were to spend 12 hours in Sephora and emerge as a multi-colored zebra, the only person in the world who wouldn’t notice would be my husband.             After I’ve spent time primping, I say, “Hey, Hon, I've colored my eyebrows thicker!   Do you like them?”   I wiggle them for dramatic effect. He answers, “You look the same.” After I’ve curled my lashes so that they reach astronomical heights- imagine Won Bin getting poked with my eyelashes when I blink- his comment is, "You look the same."   I’m pretty sure that if I said, “Hey, Hon, I got my lips tattooed three times bigger and added three lip piercings!”, he’d probably say, "You look the same.” This might seem inattentive, but in an ironic way, it’s also very reassuring. He does not love me for the molecules which surround my skin, but for who I am inside.   At least that’s what he tells me.             When we got married, Won Bin said to me, “Someday, you will get old, fat, and wrin