hope everything comes out all right

I said earlier, I no longer really give a shit about turning 50, it's old news now. It's still a milestone; I know women who have thrown themselves parties, or have had parties thrown in their honor, or have thrown themselves into pools to celebrate.

I imagine other women might use the event to get their girly on: get a mani/pedi, some botox injections, a makeover, a new man, maybe some fat sucked out of their thighs.

Sadly, I'm a little too pragmatic and stingy to indulge in many of those things. So instead, this week, I did what perhaps most of us should do at this age: ordered new bifocals, and had a colonoscopy consultation.

The word "colonoscopy" can induce fits of helpless giggles in otherwise mature grownups. I mean, the idea of someone snaking a camera and a polyps-snipper through your bowels and who knows where else is truly riotous. You have to have a sense of humor about it. So I'm pretty sure when I spent the half hour or so talking to Lisa, the nurse practitioner, she had already heard a million times before all the nervous lame jokes I made, ending with a cheerful encore of "well, I hope everything comes out all right!"

Groan.

My concern is not the procedure itself, scheduled for the end of the month, but the prep. It helps to do your homework before the consultation so you can ask appropriate questions, such as "exactly how much crap can I expect to expel during the prep?" You are warned that it may be "uncomfortable." As in, for 24 hours before the procedure, don't go anywhere not within 5 feet of a toilet, and prepare for perhaps the first time in your adult life to wear a diaper to bed. And tell the kids to spend the night elsewhere, or sit them down and have a serious talk about how all those times you said you didn't fart or poop because you're a lady and ladies don't do that...you were lying.

(Of course, my boys already know I was lying, but up to now, I've worked hard to keep the illusion alive.)

After this is done, there really won't be too much left to be shy about. With my first birth, the ob/gyn made a joke about a dull knife while he's giving me an episiotomy. My tits have been squeezed, prodded and smashed through 15 years of annual mammograms and ultrasounds. And soon I will have a snake up my ass. There's not many more ways I can be physically humiliated. In a weird way, it's kind of liberating.