And, we’ve had that site for two years.  We‘re so all over the Internet now that I’m running out of daylight uploading everywhere ELSE.  The Midlife Gals are ‘official’ contributors to 4 sites that we need to concentrate on now in addition to our own.  They are:

More Magazine online  (where we can be found under Reinvent Yourself / Second Acts).
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National Association of Baby Boomer Women  (usually under Member Articles, but this site'll cost you $)
[Link Removed]

Baby Boomer Advisor Club  (Usually under Jokes)
[Link Removed]

Midlife Bachelor  (where we video respond to mens questions)
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But we want you all to come to OUR site most of all!  We need the numbers and have tired of givin’ it away!
THE MIDLIFE GALS
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Please join us when you can...and comment, comment, comment!
TaTa Fab40!
KK and SalGal

Themidlifegals, Your links have been removed, please consider upgrading to premium membership.

TGIF can mean a lot of things, and in this case, we're talking about RE-gifting.  Tell me that you've never re-gifted, and I'll call you a liar...or a saint...or maybe too driven!  Let's face it, we've all received gifts whereby, after our initial shock and embarrassment for the GIVER because a tacky fake crystal giraffe is NOT reflective of the type of gift one should give another...We smile a fake, warm smile, and say, "Oh!  I know EXACTLY where I'm going to put this (on my re-gift shelf in the garage).  You SHOULDN'T have! (really)."

TGIF happens when you've forgotten to take a hostess gift or buy a wedding gift as you fly out the door to the WEDDING...we've all done it...fess up.  "Sal, should we give them the toilet roll dispenser on a stand or the gravy ladle in the shape of a swan?"  Hmmm.

Wine can always be re-gifted, but if it's a really cheap wine, you must immerse the bottle in warm water until the label peels away and then stick on your own label..."The Midlife Gals Ruby Doobie Red," and tell them that you make your own wine and wanted them to try it.  You can add that a superior winemaker from Napa Valley actually makes the wine for you, and that it recently won the Wines Society Boomer Winemaker of the Year award.  And, get this...their palette will shift from a Sam's Club selection to a fancy Bordeaux with all the tannens they can bare.  It's called blind tasting, and if they don't know the difference, you'll be lauded and praised all the way to Sunday for your 'special' gift.

Be creative in your re-gifting.  Just Google re-gifting and you'll find a myriad of ideas...why, there's even a site called, 'Learn How to Regift.'  If there is anything else The Midlife Gals can help you with, please do let us know.

Go out there and GIVE, I mean RE-Give!

KK

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I'm not very good at re-gifting.  I once gave my favorite sea shell to a little girl for her fourth birthday.  She was insulted and dismayed.  It wasn't plastic, banana yellow, or meant to be visible on a computer screen.  She actually threw it down as her mother lightly scolded her, "Now, honey, that's not very nice."  It was everything I could do to hold my tongue and not call her the baby-bitch that she was.

I wish I still had that sea shell.  It was cool.

I once gave a movie costume designer a first edition Victorian dress design book for her birthday.  She looked at me like I was crazy.  Again I did not get the kudos I expected.  Okay, so it was a little frayed and I had obviously tried out a new Crayola box on some of the pages when I was two years old but? sheesh.  

I guess I don't re-gift but rather I take something that means something to me that has been around for a long time and then I gift it to some poor soul who is expecting a real present.  They may think I'm being cheap but really I'm just an old softie with a closet full of knick-knacks and things I can't throw away.

Here are some things I'm going to give away to friends for Christmas and birthdays and I hope they like them because I can't stop doing this.  It's an obsession.

A 1999 '12 Sexy Firemen' calendar.

This would be good for any woman over 40. 'April' is worth checking out.

A 'Guero's' napkin signed by Willie Nelson and his band.

An original wardrobe drawing of a teen on a horse from the movie, 'The Postman.'  It's framed for God's sake!

A stack of all the National Geographic magazines from 1962.  (I'll tie it with a nice bow and bring a dolly with some bungee cord that they can use to get it home)

An autographed headshot of the The Midlife Gals and a CD containing forty three of our best videos.  Now, who wouldn't want that?

When is your birthday?  I will bring you a really cool present.  

SalGal

I love the word, Daddy.  It just sounds like someone you would love.  Of course, I tend to think about things as if they are chapters from a good southern novel, so a Daddy for me connotes a big, strong, handsome man in uniform in an old black and white Polaroid from 1943.  He's with his Navy buddies on a crowded ship in the middle of the Pacific.  They're off duty, drunk, smoking and playing poker on an overturned bucket from their bunks below deck.

I picture a Daddy tying his little girl's shoe laces and teaching her how to make the loop go under and through.  He is patient and funny.  The little girl knows her life parameters from the inside of his embrace.  When she looks up at him, she knows his strength.  She hears laughter roar from his mouth, then drift down to her level as cool air does from a ceiling fan on a hot day.  That's enough to make anyone smile.

A Daddy to me is someone who is more comfortable and emotionally available with his baby girl child than he could ever be with his wife?just those moments in time where his intimacy is distinctly a Daddy's, vulnerable and sweeter than a chocolate truffle.  His little girl is the prettiest, smartest and toughest prodigy on the planet?and he'd beat up anyone who disagreed.

Daddys smell of fresh aftershave and starch.  When they're dressed up, they look so smart.  They seem indestructible and pretty at the same time.  To see a Daddy open the door for his daughter, no matter what age, is crushing in its simplicity and gentleness. To watch this couple dance can break the heart.  To see a Daddy kiss his baby girl goodbye on her way to college can make you cry in your car as you drive by?a total stranger, brought to your knees with that  soft, sweet gesture.

Daddys are protective of their young ladies.  You'd better be a better man than her Daddy if you want to marry his daughter.  He'll watch you and if you hurt her, he will act like he could kill you, but he'll rush to her aid and tell her to forget all about you instead because, "Daddy's here now."  Daddys buy their girls the best presents when they're sad.  Nothing is too good or costs too much for a Daddy to see her smile again.

And, if a Daddy's young woman-girl has a baby girl of her own, he'll melt at the sight of her, swoon at her whimper and gasp when she giggles.  He gets to do it all over again, and you'll have to beg him to leave when it's way past her bedtime.  He'll begrudgingly go home, and when he sees his own love, the woman who gave him his baby girl and her own girl, he'll cry in her arms at the excruciating beauty the world can hold.  Daddy's an old softie.

A Daddy is even more handsome when his own skin is old and soft.  He still smells of aftershave and starch, but also like a tree who will lose its leaves come Fall.  He stands stooped like the tree, but with wisdom that comes from all the seasons of his growth.  Daddy's finally learn how lost their girls would be without them and how rooted they are in the periphery of those lives.  They carry a predisposed sadness with them wherever they go, underneath their crooked smiles and inside their clothes?just waiting to go.

I have knowledge that  Daddys are all of these things.  My women friends tell me stories and I laugh and cry with them.  I use their Daddys as my own.  My Daddy died before I started school, went to my first dance or drove for the first time.  He's watching me though and smiling down at his baby girl child.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy.

Although I hadn't anticipated a change of plans last night, everything turned out just peachy.  I had put the last coat of mascara on my eight eyelashes, blush on my cheek and a spritz of hair spray to secure my new 'do,' standing in front of the mirror thinking that I looked pretty damn pretty when the phone rang (an hour or so before my expected first date in MANY months).

"How are you?  I'm exhausted," he said.  NOT a good beginning.  The source of his exhaustion, you might ask?  Sitting out in the "hot sun by the pool" for EIGHT hours at a local RESORT for an "all-day planning session" with his business partners.  "That IS exhausting," said I, beginning to realize that he had no intention of going on a date with me that night.  The blush on my cheek darkened as the steam rose from my head.

I found myself saying stupid things like, "We'll just do it again sometime, no problem."  You can guess what my 'post edit' went like as I kicked myself and boinged my forehead with the palm of my hand.  We're always SO much more eloquent AFTER we've hung up, aren't we?  When I told Sal what had happened, she raced into the bathroom to put on her own face, got all dolled up just like me and off we went to the Four Seasons Hotel bar for martinis and apps.  And, we had the BEST time!  

It wasn't until we returned home and turned on the TV that I discovered another of the reasons I had been blown off in such an embarrassing manner...the first game of the NBA finals.  I pictured the man 'in question' cozied up on his couch, beer in one hand and remote in the other, cheering on his favorite team, jumping around pounding his chest like a Neanderthal  over a Dwight Howard slam dunk (yes, women like basketball too!).  He's happy as a clam and oddly alert again.  Hmmmmm.

Middle age obviously brings me no more intelligence or good judgment than rejection did in my twenties.  I'm just more polite on the phone is all.  But, my middle-aged 'post edit' did NOT include beating MYSELF up over a silly silly man who missed out on one incredible woman...her presence, her wit, humor and attention.  Tsk.  Tsk.  Tis a wonder to me even still.

KK

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Jerk.

Okay, my life has been one 'change of plans' after another.  When I was little I wanted to be a nun or a hobo.  I wanted to hop trains but then I found out in elementary school that you can't do that in a nun's habit.

In high school I wanted to be an artist and paint canvasses, but in college I found out that my place was in the theeahtah.  I walked into a theater with a friend in Santa Fe and was asked to help with some backstage stuff.  Uh, oh, I thought?. I think I just wasted four years of college classes in painting, printmaking, sketching and sculpture only to find out that I belong in this dusty, black box filled with raggedy seats and weird people dressed in black on a wooden stage going, "MWAAH, MWAAH, MWAAH."  The bricks on the wall were fake.  The curtains were torn.  I was hooked.

Change of plans.

I have a part in a movie right now that is really fun.  I get to die and be blue and have vomit wiped off my face by a cute, young actor from LA.  He plays my son and even though he does a bad thing, well? you'll just have to see the film when it comes out.  Can't wait.

I thought I was going to come to Austin and continue to teach Method For Film and do a lot of indie films but?

Change of plans.

I ended up as one half of the craziest pair of comedic mavens to hit the scene since Lucy and Ethel moved to Connecticut.  We're taking up the mantel and holding it high with martinis in our left hands, a tri-pod and camera, and facial expressions that rival those of Jim Carey playing the part of an orangutan.

This is the most fun I've had since I played a sleepy pigeon in a ComCast commercial.  But here I get to do it with my KK and have my Smirnoff before we leave the set.

Second chances are great but you've got to get up off your ass and make them happen or you wind up with up with nothing but a cross-word puzzle and reruns of 'Wheel of Fortune' as you trudge through life regretting the changes of plans you were too afraid to make.

Will there be another change of plans for me now?  Yeah.  KK and I have got great futures waiting for us to catch up, and we are on the highway from writing and video camera to our likenesses bigger than Auto Park American flags pasted on the sides of Warner Brother's studios and on every bus-stop bench in Hollywood.  Never mind that thugs will paint mustaches on our faces and birds will poop on our air-brushed hair.  We're on our way!

SalGal

...and I ain't talking about clothes that need cleaning!  Every time the subject of marriage comes up, someone asks me if I've ever been married, and because I'm an honest person, I have to hold up THREE fingers.  Talk about your dirty laundry.  Some people's jaws drop but after realizing that their reaction might be a bit STRONG, they smile that sympathetic smile as if to say, 'Bless your heart.'  HA!  They don't mean that.  What they are thinking is, 'Jeeeeez, here's a woman who obviously has relationship issues!'

What they forget is that I'm 57 years old for Christ's sake.  And, I married Mr. One when I was TWENTY!  That was my first mistake, that and the fact that I didn't realize until after I left him that he was sleeping with women I knew, didn't know, the waitress at the local restaurant, our 'mutual' women friends...just anyone with a vagina as I came to know.  It was HIS laundry that was dirty!

I'm usually good for about a decade in a relationship, then my mind and heart start to wander off.  I don't know why, but I finally get pissed off that they snore, try to control me, or let ME control them, tell the same joke for the 5,000th time, make people watch our travel slide shows until they're BEGGING to go home, start drinking vodka in the morning, never did find my 'G' spot or have hair in their ears...those kinds of little annoyances that I guess most women can put up with.  As I said, in today's world, staying with someone in a relationship for a decade ain't chopped liver, and I'm pretty proud of that.

My laundry is only slightly 'soiled,' but it doesn't have 'tracks' of any kind.  I'm faithful (okay, there was just the one cowboy on that cattle drive), loving (well, maybe to the point of suffocation, but...), empathetic (sheesh...so I'm an enabler, so what?), supportive (until MY money ran out!) and kind (I gave out take-away gifts to all who had to suffer through our travel slide shows).  I'm just sayin.

And, here's the thing...if a man has visited this site (and one particular one has) in recent months, and is STILL interested in me...how bad can I really be?

Don't answer that!

KK

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How many times have you heard somebody say, "Don't air your dirty laundry!"

People used to do that, hang their laundry out to dry on the clothes line outside in the back yard.  Not many people do that any more.

But here is my question:  Why would you hang your dirty laundry outside?  Yes, you hang your washed clothes outside on the line because you want the sun and wind to dry them.  But?.why would you hang your dirty laundry out there?

That's a dumb saying.  Only a doedoehead would do that.  I know, I know, it means don't pull your skeletons out of the closet and hang them in the trees for all to see.  It means don't tell anybody about the time you got drunk and threw up on your boss's shoes at the office Christmas party?or the time you woke up in the back yard wearing nothing but your turquoise cowboy boots and a red bandanna tied around your thigh.  Don't tell anybody about that one-night stand back in '86' with a drummer from a honky-tonk band who introduced you to?..

Don't do it.  Don't air that dirty laundry unless it's in a book you write that makes you a million dollars and a movie deal starring Kathy Bates and Jim Carey.  Then it would be worth it.

SalGal

The Midlife Gals new VIDEO advice column at More Magazine online needs questions!  Please do us a favor and go to more.com, join (it’s free) and then go to the “Reinvention/Second Acts section...look for our Dear Midlife Gals stories (or our other text stories) and start COMMENTING!  We want them to think we‘re popular and have friends.  This will help tremendously!

Thanking you all in advance,
KK and SalGal