Aging out of our fun bracket

SO a funny thing happened to us on the way to midlife... stop me if you've heard this one before.

I read a lot.  Possibly not a surprise to anyone who knows me personally.  Anyhow, I like Slate and Salon and MSN Lifestyle, and while the Beauty and Fashion articles almost never pertain to me anymore, I like to keep up on the Family and Life type bits.  That's me - always trying to enrich my life!  But lately, I've noticed a funny thing.  All those pithy little articles that used to feel so relevant, about dating and mating and such, don't really fit anymore.  Kind of like a pair of jeans that I used to be able to squeeze into, there's just a whole lot more of me than can be stuffed into those categories these days. 

The same thing is happening when I go to look at the Family articles.  Everything out there seems to be about parenting small children.  Do children cease to exist when they turn teenagers?  Judging by the constant mess and raucous music (music??) emanating from the house whenever they are around, I'm pretty certain that I can verify the existence of Teenus spasticus, the Common Household Teenager.  But you couldn't prove that by the rest of the mainstream world.

Oh, sure... there are other articles out there.  Yeah, THOSE ones.  The ones with the smiling white haired people.  The ones that get the pop-up sidebars for bladder control drugs and Jazzy scooters.  But here's the rub - we don't exactly fit there either.  I'm going on record to say that I don't have grandkids, don't own an RV, and have never been to Florida.  And I for heavensakes have never 'swayed to the soothing sounds of Lawrence Welk', except when my great-grandpa took the TV set hostage and forced me to retreat behind the big living room sofa with a Trixie Belden novel and a stolen bag of chocolate chips from Grandma's pantry. 

So where are the articles, MSN?  You give me "Five ways to a Hot Date Night", but at least two revolve around getting a good babysitter, and the other two don't take OUR early bedtime into the mix!  And honestly?  Your "Outdoor Date Ideas" are a bit rough on my Parkie, as well as my finicky gallbladder.  An outdoor pub crawl?  Yep, I'd have the crawling thing pretty well down pat, except there's nothing in your instruction book that covers how to get your teenagers to withdraw cash from the emergency account for bail, and THEN GET THEM TO STOP LAUGHING, DAMMIT. 

So, I guess for now, since I'm not into Bingo and I don't think they'll let us back into the bar after the last time we were making out around the pool table, we'll just have to stick with "Home and Decor".  After all, paint choices are pretty stimulating, right?

UPDATE:  After this post, I found just what I was looking for:  http://www.notreadyforgrannypanties.com.  Too funny!  I dig it.