I've mentioned before that my thirty-third birthday is giving me hives. Not literal hives, figurative ones. And that sucks worse that the literal ones, because at least with those, take a little Benadryl and they go away. There is no figurative Benadryl.
Usually, it's your landmark birthdays that give you grief. For my twenty-fifth birthday, I had a small child, so that one didn't bother me. I was suitably distracted from the implications of my thirtieth by a surprise trip to New York City. (That trip was so surprise that the actual destination was a secret until we actually boarded the plane to Newark, NJ. All I knew was that we were going on a trip and I needed a pretty dress. Still the all-time favorite birthday. Good work, Spike and Speith.)
For some reason, this one is really getting to me. And it's not the fact that I'm officially one-third of a century old, although if you say that out loud, that's fucking daunting. It's also not that people keep telling me it could be so much worse, I could be 40 or 50 or whatever. I get that. I'm not sure what it is.
The birthday itself was wonderful. On Friday night, the birthday eve, we went out to a fancy dinner with Speith and his family, and our little family of four. We had a fantastic time. I got absolutely smashed. And it's a little bit sad when your nine-year-old goes with you to the bathroom at the end of the night to make sure you don't fall into the toilet. (Me: What would you do if I did fall into the toilet? M1: I would go get Dad. He's right outside the door.) The good part to that is that she's not witness to my drunkenness terribly often, but now I'm pretty sure she equates birthdays with drunkenness. Or maybe just my birthdays with drunkenness. And maybe her dad's. As both kids noted when we walked into the restaurant: "It's Mom's turn to have wine and drinks! It was Dad's turn last time!" (Last time being Dad's birthday.) Although, she appears to have taken the example of my entire life as a horrible warning. Here are the things she will never, ever do: smoke, drink alcohol (it's a drug, Mom!) and have a baby. I may be raising a very boring adult. Who is apparently directly from the 1940s, because she informed me this weekend that "I'm not steamed about that cat business anymore." (Which is to say: she's no longer angry at her father for not allowing us to adopt a cat on impulse yesterday. She did, however, punish him by crying like her heart was broken for a solid hour. She didn't win, but never underestimate a nine-year-old's powers of manipulation.) It's all fodder for more emotion-laced therapy sessions, but now we have to worry about the possibility that they will be emotion-laced, new-age therapy sessions, what with the possibility of past lives that has now been introduced thanks to her seventy-year-old vocabulary.
Saturday, the children gave me gifts: a bottle of Faith Hill perfume from M2 (it was all sealed up, so he couldn't smell it before he bought it for me - so he went on bottle aesthetic as his criteria) and a Happy Birthday Barbie from M1. I think that it might have been a bit of a boomerang gift, but she insists that it's because I collect Barbies. Really, the Holiday Barbie 2001 I have belongs to her. The other two Barbies are Frank Sinatra-centric, and not purchased for the "Barbie" part at all. In any case, I thanked her and put HB Barbie on the shelf with the others. Saturday night, the kids went to Grandma's for a sleepover, and Spike and I went to eat Thai food and see movies. We saw Your Highness, which was not as awesome as I wanted it to be, and Paul, which was more awesome than I had any right to hope for.
The day sped by, and it mostly just felt like a day.
I don't know that there are any deep-rooted reasons for feeling this way, other than the society-imposed feeling that I absolutely should not be doing all this at the age at which I'm doing this. It seems to just be a feeling of uneasiness, like my mortality is creeping up on me like a ninja wearing an invisible suit. I can hear him breathing, but I still can't see him.
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