Hi. I’m a grown woman who gave herself a black eye with a car door last night. While the responsibility of my injury doesn’t rest solely on me (there was snow, a full moon, and my menstrual cycle all at play), I do feel really silly. Who gets a black eye? A middle-aged black eye? A SOBER middle-aged black eye? Me, I guess. I feel. So dumb.

The last time I had a black eye was in college, when someone named Chris threw a frisbee and it hit me in the eye. Wasn’t there always a guy name Chris throwing a frisbee or playing hacky sack on the quad? Chris was very penitent, bless him, but I had to bop around UGA with a nasty black eye for a week or so. Thankfully, I was wearing glasses at the time of the accident, otherwise it may have been worse. Were they my glasses? No. I found them and was wearing them for fashion. I used to do things like that in college: wear other people’s glasses. As a grown person, I would never think to put a stranger’s glasses on MY FACE. But back then, it was no big deal. I’d wear your cast-off glasses, your old hat, your diamond earring in my nose- nothing bothered me. It was all a costume to me. As RuPaul says, “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.”

Anyhow. What I’d like to talk about is middle-aged fun. How- I mean, what how do we have fun? Now? During COVID? Fun used to be hanging out and talking/ drinking with friends. Or going over to someone’s house for food and libations. Now that we can’t do that anymore, what’s a girl to do for fun?

What sparked my query was my Counseling Theories class. One of the theories called “Reality Theory” includes “fun” as an important need. I’d never thought of “fun” as a need, but I think it is. So how do we have fun? Drinking can be fun, but it’s not fun the next morning if you have stuff to do other than lay in bed. Movies and T.V. are definitely fun, but I think their availability makes them less fun. I take T.V. for granted. I think it could be more fun if I didn’t watch it every night. There’s a thing called the “hedonic adaptation” where happiness eventually wears off. Like, T.V. made me very happy when I didn’t have it and then finally got it. Now it’s like, “eh, okay.” I’m back to baseline. But if you take a break from something that makes you happy, you appreciate it more when you have it. Interesting, eh?

Playing with my child is fun. Sometimes. He’s in this weird phase where he makes Husband and I act out all his toys for him. “Talk like Night Ninja!!!” he’ll shout. And I’ll say, “what are my given circumstances?” because I am an actress and I would like a story. I can’t just do this cold, man. What’s Night Ninja’s relationship with Owlette? Give me some direction here.

So that’s not really fun. To me.

I’ve decided to do some stuff that was fun when I was a kid. I’ve started noodling around on the piano again, but this time with sheet music from rock songs. It was something of an “ah-ha” moment when I realized that playing the piano didn’t mean playing classical music. Is it fun? Yes. Let me tell you, you’ve never lived until you’ve heard “Iron Man” played on a 90’sYamaha keyboard’s glockenspiel setting. RAWK!

I also bought a little painting set. Oils. I haven’t started doing anything with it because, well, I have no idea what to do, but it’s there. And it’s a start. It’s fun to look at- all the teeny tubes and stuff. I am anticipating a lot of clean-up, which is intimidating. We still have paint on our walls from earlier crafts. Who knew that painting a Trolls sun-catcher would make such a mess? Worth it.

Blogging is also fun. I’ve always liked to write. I used to type type type away at a soap opera I made in high school. All the characters had insanely romantic names and wore kimonos as dressing gowns. One character got pushed in a pool at some point, and there were so many love triangles. It was very trashy. Very fun.

I hope you find your fun today on this glorious Friday. I am going to do some work, then experiment with some makeup to cover this hellacious black eye. Wish me luck!