Bob wrote a blog post about a series of senior moments he endured last week, which you can read here. So in the interest of fairness, and because he’s threatening to blog about it if I don’t, I must tell you about mine.

Yesterday I was making a vat o’ potato salad for a dinner party. As I stirred all the ingredients together, I thought, “Huh, that didn’t take as long as I thought.” But as I stirred them a little longer, I realized the potatoes weren’t mushing together like they should. Then I realized, it’s because I forgot to cook them. So I had to dig through all the mayonnaise and other glop to extract each hard potato slice, one by one, then wash them off, then boil them.

So there you have it. You’re reading it here first — and so are the guests who ate it last night.

Sometimes there are advantages to listening to the bubble-gum hiphop music my kids like. The catchy tunes grind away in my head, running in a loop, providing a soundtrack to my life.

The latest one to get stuck up there is a little ditty called “Bulletproof.” Only I just realized that I’m not singing it right. The chorus is “This time baby, I’ll be bulletproof.” I was singing it “This time maybe I’ll be bulletproof.” Which goes to show you how a middle-aged mindset can color everything in your life.

Of course a young 20-something would sing “This time baby I’ll be bulletproof” with the certainty that only a 20-something could have. The song is about how she won’t let her loser boyfriend back into her life.

But the way I sing it, “This time, maybe, I’ll be bulletproof,” is a wish and a prayer. Also a recognition of uncertainty that comes with age. What I really want, what I pray for, is to be bulletproof. Not from the stings of a bad boyfriend, but from all the things that could lay me low. I want protection for me and mine. Cover us all with bulletproof skin.

E-mail from alumni chair to Zeta Chi sorority alumni:

Dear Zeta Chi Alum,

Let me introduce myself – my name is ___________, I am a Junior and I joined Zeta Chi on Spring 2010. I am the new Alumni Chair and I am excited to work with former Zeta Chis this year. As part of my duties, I will be planning the Alumni Weekend in October and ZX’s 30th Anniversary!

E-mail from my college roommate/sorority sister to me:

Hi there — Can you believe this shit??? I emailed her and told her to get her facts straight. I said Honey, I was in the second pledge class, so I know there’s no way it can be a 30 year anniversary. More like 10 or 15. Tops.

You should tell her too. Somebody has to straigthen this out.

E-mail from me to my college roommate:

One of us is in denial. And it ain’t just a river in Egypt.

E-mail from my college roommate to me:

Bitch. Love ya.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post both wrote recently that women are becoming more and more unhappy the older they get. They site numerous studies all over the world. And it seems that over the past 40 years, women have become increasingly unhappy. We start out pretty upbeat as girls, then it all goes downhill. It seems as if we middle-aged broads are doomed to gloom.

Neither Maureen or Arianna offers a definitive explanation for why this occurs. It could have something to do with having kids — that old saying, “A mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child” could have something to do with it. Or maybe it’s because we have more on our plates — trying to do all the stuff our mothers did, plus all the stuff our fathers did could be taking its toll.

Or it could be that women are becoming more and more likely to pause for a moment while taking a survey to ask themselves, “What is happiness, anyway?”

For me, it happens in unplanned moments, especially when I’m not pursuing it. In fact, maybe it’s the constant pursuit of happiness that is making us miserable.