Gonna Party Like It's My Birthday...

Not.

Tomorrow is my 39th birthday.

Thirty-nine.

It’s hard to believe that I am damn-near 40 years old. Another year closer to being dead and no years closer to being the person that I always thought I’d be.

That’s a damn shame.

The problem is that I still don’t know what it is that I want to be when I grow up. The bigger problem is that I need to figure it out pretty damn quick since I am awfully, awfully close to being grown up. This, too, is a damn shame.

What a difference a year makes... This time last year I was surrounded by friends, living in a place that I knew well (and really, really liked) and I was a contributing member of society. I had a job and a social life and solid plan for my birthday. Last year I went to lunch with friends almost every day of my birthday week and had phô and chocolate cake and ahi tuna sandwiches - all within walking distance of my office.

This year, I am sitting up at nigh midnight looking up possible day trips for tomorrow - somewhere to go so that I don’t end up sitting in the living room watching a marathon of "True Hollywood Story" on E! Entertainment Television or reruns of "Two and a Half Men" while stuffing myself with bowl after bowl of Cinder Toffee ice cream and swigging hard cider from the bottle to keep from feeling sorry for myself; something to do other than clean the front room and try to put craft supplies and a hundred tech gadgets and their various peripherals into spaces that don’t exist.

There’s no solid plan for what to do tomorrow - just a bunch of suggestions, some self-pitying mewling from myself and a few half-hearted attempts by the husband to come up with a day plan. This is pissing me off. I love my birthday.

My stepfather and a good friend of mine prefer natal anniversary to birthday. My SIL asks me if I’m “x again” each time age comes up. Well, none of that horseshit for me. It’s my freakin’ birthday and I am 39. I am not coyly pretending to be some age other than the one that I've worked damn hard to reach, nor am I am couching the word "birthday" in gentler terms. I am happy to age. The alternative does not bear thinking about at the moment. I just want to celebrate my birthday.

I’d rather intended to write about how much tomorrow was going to suck since I was going to miss talking to my stepmother (who never fails to remember my birthday), but she called me this afternoon to wish me happy birthday and to talk to me before she boarded a plane to San Diego to see my sister’s 20-year Retirement ceremony from the Marines (Semper Fi!) and my older sister sent me an iCard from Apple.

Could it be a happy birthday after all?