I've stopped getting carded. It’s devastating. It happened so suddenly. One day I was annoyed at, yet again, having to fork over my driver’s license when I am so obviously old enough to buy that $8.99 magnum of pinot grigio—don’t the two five-year old boys tugging on my skirt and manhandling everything in sight give it away?

No! But apparently my lackluster 30 something self does! I don’t know what changed. I look the same. Exactly the same. Not a day older, not a day younger. The adult acne that plagues my chin isn’t even helping my cause. It’s now truly just the bane of my existence.

At first I thought it was a fluke. You know that first time, I had Henry in the liquor store with me, in his pajamas, in the middle of the afternoon. Of course the cashier was going to think I am old enough to purchase a bottle of white rum. Only people old enough to drink actually have the nerve to tote a small child wearing pajamas into the liquor store at 3:45 on a Tuesday.

But then, as luck would have it, I was back in the liquor store just four days later (we did a lot of entertaining last month) and a completely different cashier didn't even look twice at me. And it's not like they know me (yes, some of you are surprised). But I've seriously been to that liquor store no more the eight times in the six years we've lived near it.

And then I realized that it was happening everywhere. Fred Meyer, Winco, Albertson's. Everywhere. Why? For the love of God, why?



Do I really look that old?