Older and Hopefully At Least a Teensy Bit Wiser

Happy birthday to me! Yesterday I officially became "thirtysomething." Yes, I know I hit the big 3-0 last year at about this time, but that's not quite the same as being firmly established in a particular decade. 30 is like a layover between the twenties and the thirties - you disembark from Flight 2029 and take the tram over to Terminal 30 and wait around, checking out the magazines, drinking coffee and trying to decide which trail mix to buy. It's a kind of transition year where you're forgiven for forgetting that you're not in the "I don't have to decide quite yet what I want to be when I grow up" stage of life anymore.

(Of course, most of my friends who are already in their 30s seem to still be in that stage. Perhaps old age pension is the new "when I grow up.")

But now I'm buckled in with my seat back upright and my tray locked and we're taxiing down the runway towards the real land of the grownups.

Although, come to think of it, my first official day in my thirties was a bit of a bust in the whole "grownup" department. I gave myself permission to do nothing constructive where housekeeping is concerned. Which is different from every other day, of course, when I pretty much do the same thing except beg forgiveness after the fact instead of give permission before. Now my livingroom looks as though the local chapter of Phi Delta Epsilon had a rousing frat party here last night. We ordered in pizza and the kids and I sat around and watched The Biggest Loser.

(I will point out that there was educational value to this particular program as The Girl was quite busy adding up the number of shed pounds each team required in order to avoid elimination.)

Then I had the opportunity to go to bed with a teenage vampire. My dear sweet husband, in an act which is all the more cherished given the amount of head-shaking he no doubt performed while doing it, purchased for my birthday present the third book in a series of adolescent literature about teenage vampires. It's kind of like Sweet Valley High meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's adolescent literature at its "finest" - if I were 13, I would be head over heels in love with mortality-challenged Edward Cullen.

So let's see - my room is a pigsty, I had pizza and Coke for supper, I watched a few hours of inane television and my current drug of choice is Edward the vegetarian vampire (he doesn't eat people, you see - just mountain lions).

I have this curious feeling that I am just about to have my travel visa revoked.