"You say it's your birthday (nananananananana)! It's my birthday, too, yeah!"

The trouble with 39 is that it’s the END of something. You’d think 40 would be more traumatic, but as with the end of my twenties, the -9 birthday is the problem. I feel old. I feel old and wrinkled and grey. When you turn 40, you’re BEGINNING something. Even if it’s another decade, it’s a START. Suddenly you’re young again, you’re “only” 40, to the people who are well into their forties already. I know it’s all in the perception – I KNOW this. But I am having a tough time with 39.
Not that I had a tough time with my birthday, mind you. I had a perfectly lovely birthday.

First of all, people, it was sunny and 70 degrees here on Saturday. B.L.I.S.S. Warm enough to wear a skirt and my Tevas, warm enough to open all the windows and blow the winter fug right out of the house.

Secondly, I was permitted to sleep in till eight. EIGHT. That’s bigtime sleeping in round these parts. (This is also how one knows she is entering her fifth decade, and not, say, her third.)

I was greeted first thing in the morning by this guy standing on my front porch.
My very sweet friend P dropped him off early in the morning, and he was welcomed warmly and stood up in the front hall. Seg is the only one who views him with complete equanimity; he walks by, pats him fondly, and says, “Hi, Ed!” The rest of us had at least smallish heart attacks at least once that day, and the baby eyes him with great trepidation and refuses to let go of my leg within a ten-foot radius.

Edward Cullen isn't sure he likes his new adoptive brothers. For one thing, even for humans they don't smell so good, and for another, they're so LOUD. Plus, Edward doesn't GET hockey.

Seg gave me his card almost immediately: How…odd. Edward is smiling. So is Bella. How very strange. And unlikely.
(Also - the red? He explained, "It's blood." Oh. Kay.)
Inside is – not me and him, as I originally suspected, but me and EDWARD. Oh boy. Perhaps an intervention IS in order. (I told him I’d rather spend eternity with him than Edward, and he beamed.)

The boys had hockey playoffs all day (Team Green lost in the first round. Boo!), and then we went to our favorite diner for burgers and chicken fingers and French fries and milkshakes (the boys) and pie (me and H). THEN we all came home and everybody took a nap (Except the baby and me. Wah! Not fair!)

I was given a ticket to a backyard hockey game between the Winston Animals and the Groveland Stuffers. (Now, I am a Schinkadabonketa fan myself, but apparently they got knocked out in the first round also.) (Don’t ask me, Primo made up all the team names a long time ago. I just root for whom I am told to root for.) Once I put my foot down and told the boys I would watch 6-minute periods, NOT 20-minute periods, they broke out the sticks and their stuffed animals and gave me a rousing spectacle of a hockey game. For the record? The Stuffers won, which isn’t surprising since all the biggest stuffed animals play for the Stuffers.

When the mail came, my high school friend J had sent me a copy of my favorite (so far) Georgette Heyer! Do you know how hard it is to find used Georgette Heyers? Almost impossible. But she bid for The Grand Sophy on eBay and won it, and sent it off to me. How sweet is that?!

Round about what would have been dinnertime (but we were all still too full of pie and milkshake to contemplate more food), I opened my “real” gifts: a gift card to Borders, and a gift certificate to the spa, and this volume, which it must have pained my husband greatly to buy:

After the boys were in bed, I went to my friend E’s, and we sat on her porch and drank cocktails and ate tortilla chips, and talked for hours in the balmy spring air. It was lovely. (When I got home at midnight, Flat E gave me a heart attack again, and I took His Vampireness upstairs to my sewing room, where my deftness with a quilting needle will impress him wildly and make him desire my blood. Like, um, Sleeping Beauty, or something. Yeah.)

When I thanked H for a wonderful birthday, he looked at me like I was nuts. But it was fun and busy and it’s always nice to find out how many people care about me. I got awesome, thoughtful gifts, and lots of Facebook greetings and emails and phone calls, and I felt very loved.

My mom always said her forties were her best decade; I am looking forward to mine. After all, I have a year of being 39 to get my act together.