35

This Thursday, I turn 35. I don't know if it's a big deal yet. My friends, all older than me (I skipped kindergarten, so everyone I grew up with was always older), said it was a hard one. Half way. I thought they meant half way to 70, which seemed funny to think about, but what they meant was that it's half way to FORTY. I guess that's getting somewhere. Maybe I don't mind because I have already lived a very fulfilling life? Not that my friends haven't, but maybe that's what we're supposed to freak out about? Like we're supposed to feel fat if we're size 10s and we're supposed to feel awful when we see an age-appropriate laugh line and we're supposed to feel old when we're forty? The more I say it, the more I am a little worried that I will be upset. I think it's less about looking and feeling older than it is about the passage of time. Because that scares me, and always has. The inevitable. Ig. I'm freaking myself out. So what do I want for my birthday? I want a super long day, where I can spend a million hours with my husband and daughter, no stress about going to work the next day, where I can eat all I want and not get too full or too guilty or too fat, and where the day ends with an amazingly huge book/movie deal that means I won't have to go to work for a few years, at least until Romy is in school, and then I can settle back in at my awesome middle school library job. If I don't tell anyone these wishes, maybe they'll come true? Um, if that's the case, I hope you didn't read this post.