My first post as a forty year old person.

Whoa.

How the hell did THAT happen?! All of the sudden, poof, I'm freakin' FORTY years old!! I need a new driver's license. I'm pretty sure I need bifocals. And I'm entering a new actuarial category.

Ugh. I simply cannot believe it. And PLEASE don't give me that mug-appropriate platitude crap that, "You're only as young as you feel!" and whatnot. Bullshit. I'm forty. Now I just need to be able to deal with it. So far, I'm off to a pretty good start.

Let me tell you how amazingly perfect my birthday has been.

On Thursday night before, BH took me out to one of my favorite swanky restaurants as a make-up for us having to cancel last Saturday night. I ordered wrong from the menu, but other than that, it was a perfectly magnificent dinner.

Yesterday--the acutal Day Of--I took the day off of work. This has become pretty much a tradition for me. I have spent the past few years treating myself to a completely indulgent day on my birthday in order to ease the pain of being one year closer to death. (Bookhart does this too, and we think you should as well. Come ON! You deserve it!)

I have to say that this particular year was one of the best because

a) it was a Friday

b) it was fookin' GORGEOUS outside, which can be extraordinarily rare for those of us with birthdays in January

c) I'm sort of burned out on work at the moment

d) I scheduled and planned it to a tee

Allow me to break it down for you:

8:45 am--My monthly visit from our cleaning service arrives to clean my entire house.

9:00 am--A potato, egg, cheese and jalapeno breakfast taco and a small coke. Breakfast excellence.

9:30 am--An AMAZING facial that included a gylcolic peal and a hydrating hand and foot treatment AND scalp massage.

11:00 am--A very badly needed manicure.

12:40 pm--A small popcorn, a large bottled water, and "Slumdog Millionaire" all by myself

3:00 pm--An hour-long massage

4:20 pm--Checking of the e-mail. Reading of the dozens of sweet birthday wishes on Facebook. Packing of the bag. And a brief rendezvous with BH who was headed out to get his youngest boy for the weekend.

I'm going to pause here to let you in on a little secret about me: I pretty much always keep the fortunes I get in fortune cookies, at least until something that fits the bill of what was predicted in the fortune occurs. Then, I figure it's safe to toss it. It's one of my weird superstitions. Well...Wednesday, Jaye and I went out for some Asian food at lunch, and this was my fortune:

And guess what BH got me for my birthday and gave me on Friday afternoon after I got home from my massage:

BAM!! Can I play it? No. Not really. But I figure, I've got a good ear for music (tone!) and I can type blindly like a mofo (motor skills!), so I can at least have fun with it, no? I am SO freakin' excited, people!! I predict YouTube stardom in a year's time.

Okay, back to the b-day timeline.

5:30 pm--Departure for Dah's house. The Geej was out there (they'd gone out there earlier in the day), and I went to join them for a "girl's night" sleepover. Dah made dinner. Geej acted sweet. I was in bed and asleep by 11:15pm.

11:00 am Saturday--Finally woke up. That's right, bitches. I got to sleep for nearly TWELVE HOURS!! Can you think of a better birthday present than that for me? Because I honestly cannot. Wow. Unbelievably awesome.

12:00pm--Lunch with Dah and The Geej. Then we went here to feed the ducks and fish.

Yes, that's a golf cart crossing the pond. Clearly, it was another gorgeous day.

1:30 pm--I left to go back to Austin. The Geej insisted on staying with Dah. BH and his youngest had gone camping. So I got home to...AN EMPTY, CLEAN, QUIET house. The birthday bliss continues!!

Afternoon--Did three loads of laundry and put it away. Cleaned up all of The Geej's clutter and got her room all organized and straightened up, which is truly saying something.

Evening--Went and got takeout for dinner. Played around on the keyboard. (I LOVE it!!) Watched "The Swell Season" on Austin City Limits. And am now looking forward to a brand new SNL in a little bit.

I know a lot of people choose to have a big blowout on their 40th. And for a while, I even considered it. But I'm SO happy with how gently and peacefully I've entered into this strange new decade of my life. If the past 48 hours have been any barometer of how my mood is going to be for the coming year, then things are going to smooth and happy.

But I STILL cannot believe I'm forty fucking years old. Holy cow.