I've tried to fight it. I've denied it. I've even lied about it. But now I have no choice but to admit it and succumb.

I'm mellowing.

It started about three years ago, when I discovered that I actually like James Taylor. That was when I was thirty, and other signs of female middle age were starting to appear.

I started wanting to turn the volume down on the TV.

I started to go to bed before 2 am.

I started liking soft rock.

That last one is the most shameful. It occurred to me one day as I was programming my favorite soft rock station into the control panel of my car. Even more depressing was the discovery that I had a favorite in the first place. I thought back.

How long had this been going on? I mean right there under my nose - and I didn't even notice it?

The answer: about six months.

Fuck.

Fuck fuckedy fuck fuck fuck.

I always liked classic rock but now I was getting into top forty kind of stuff, the type of music for which I had been harboring a serious and simmering disdain for some time. Look at the stuff that's been mass-produced and turned out at top speed recently, over the last five years especially and you'll see what I mean.

Hence my concern.

Female middle age. How depressing.

Or it was.

Now I've just decided to go with it.

At least it's quiet.

~~~~

I am enjoying A Walk to Remember so much! The way Nicholas Sparks writes is so beautiful and heartfelt I really become absorbed in what I'm reading. It makes me want to invest in an entire Nicholas Sparks library of UPS delivered priced to own paperbacks.

The odd thing about it is, I saw the film and cried like I had just lost a family member, I know the book is going to make me cry, yet I'm determined to finish it. That darn movie started all of this. I've become obsessed with it. It was just that damned good.

It had another interesting side effect too, which is what inspired the above posted mini-rant about female middle age.

It got me interested in Mandy Moore's music.

I said a few days ago that I wasn't a fan yet but was warming up to her.

Well, today I was checking out some of her songs on the internet and I'm completely hooked. When I first saw her on TV a year ago I figured she was like Kaci or Britney or Christina, only doomed to fade into obscurity after the other girls outsold her. Not only has she hung in there, I now see how truly talented she is.

Her voice is amazing and she rocks for the other reasons I mentioned a few days ago too.

Perhaps mellowing doesn't completely suck. If not for that I might not have given the movie a chance considering the star was someone I had previously considered to be yet another artistically bankrupt diva clone.

Perhaps I'm just becoming more open minded in my old age.

* snort! *