Desperately seeking Zen

Snapchat experiment A few months ago I colored and cut my hair. It was darker, flippier and made people look at me twice. "Did you darken your hair? You look so different." "I didn't recognize you!" "Love your new look (winky, winky. OK I made that up. Nobody but a weirdo or my Mom winks at me anymore. I'm 47 for God's sake!) Anyway, in my world, change is welcome -  no matter how small. All this "live in the moment" and "being present" talk exhausts me sometimes because frankly, I'm bored with the moment. I've been working at the same job for 10 years. Married to the same (wonderful) man for 25 years and living in the same house for 22 years. At 32 I must have been going through something like this because I got a tattoo. An astrological and now graying tattoo that to this day I forget is there until I see my drooping backside in the mirror and think, "What the hell was I thinking getting a tramp stamp?...

 A couple weeks ago my 16-year-old daughter proposed her birthday present to me: to have her boyfriend over for dinner. Now, you may scoff "what a self-centered teenage thing to do," but consider the backstory....I had been encouraging her for months to have this fella over more. They had been dating for at least five months (though there was some passionate first love drama a couple years back) and she was always going to his house to hang with his family and watch movies. They were obviously the chosen ones. I was the stepmother. Seriously though, I had myself believing "doesn't every teenager want to have their significant other over all the time to hang out with their parents?" HellaNO! But for whatever reason, this she did. This was the second time the young man with the deep voice and swagger had been to our house (at least that I know of), and while a boyfriend of few words, he was polite and treated my daughter with respect and answered my...