….tomorrow I turn forty.

I plan to spend the day stuffing my face with all the sorts of goodies I normally deny myself, then top it off with a huge round of take-away sushi and maybe the first few discs of the remastered Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Edition box set.

In point of fact, this “milestone” means little to me. I certainly don’t feel any more mature….more like a big, creaky, slow-witted teenager. I feel better now, physically, than I have in a few years, which is nice. I am of course in much worse shape than I was in my twenties, but I don’t feel particularly bad about it. I mean, I’ve had some serious debilitating physical problems over the last ten years or so, and my job has become more and more sedentary over that same time period, so some incipient decrepitude was certain to set in.

Emotionally I’ve never been happier. This is not as glowing a review as it might seem on the surface: until I started hanging out with Margaret I was a horribly depressed and sometimes unstable individual. But better is better—hell, better is much better—and the truth is, I wouldn’t trade my life right now for anything.

So, forty it is. Yee-haw, pass the Metamucil, and you kids get off my damn lawn. 😡

I really only brought up the subject because I’ve received a number of birthday cards in the mail from family members (thanks everyone!). They were all very cute, and very much appreciated.

But my hands-down favorite one came, not from a friend or family member, but from an organization:

I can’t decide whether this is just a mistake, a joke on the part of some anonymous AARP envelope-stuffer (or more likely, some anonymous data miner for a direct-mail company in the employ of the AARP. In fact, that’s just how I would amuse myself during slow periods, were I in the employ of such an agency), or an honest attempt to sucker me into becoming a dues-paying “member” ten years before I am actually eligible.

Whatever the answer, I’m seriously tempted to take this as a Sign and send in the membership form. My feeling is that it’s never too early to get started on codgerdom. 😉