The one where Aunt Gay and Uncle Joe save the day

Did you know I’m going to be 40 in a few weeks? I KNOW! How come I still have acne? What’s up with that?

In no particular order, some things that I wanted to do were… go to Walt Disney World and stay in the Animal Kingdom Lodge where I can wake up, throw open balcony doors, and watch giraffes as I’m drinking my morning coffee… or I wanted to… wait, I’m thinking…. no; that was pretty much what I wanted. I’ve been dreaming of doing that for about the last six or seven years. But I knew for certain about six months ago that this wasn’t going to be in the cards. Even before Tim got laid off we couldn’t afford to do this.

So; being realistic, I started thinking… what can we afford to do? And it pretty much boiled down to having a pot luck dinner wherein I try my hardest not to act like a complete cuntbag because there are no giraffes.

But here’s the thing– I don’t really want to have a party. And it’s not some sort of “oh my god my life is over I’m turning forty wahhhhhhhhugh!” thing. I’m really OK with turning 40. All this gray hair is a reward for not dying in some stupid teenage prank. I don’t have a problem with getting older. It’s just that I feel like being quiet; being still; being with just a few people. At one point Tim and I were talking about all the cheap fun things we could do with lots of people (party at our house, party at a park, some sort of bar meetup) and I whined to him “I know it sounds like I’m saying I don’t want to have fun, I just want to be with you but… I really just want to be with you! With family!”. And I know, I know– my stepmother lives here in town (she’s family) and my mother just lives a couple hours south (she’s family) and even Tim’s sister is just a quick car ride away (she’s family). But I just… I don’t know how to describe it. I just want to be near people I don’t have to put on a show for, people I can easily be quiet around if I choose to, people I can trust and let my guard down around.

And a month or two ago I was whining to my ever-patient, ever-fabulous aunt and uncle. Aunt Gay – and by the way, have I mentioned that she and I share our birthday? We’re both October 11th! – asked me was there anything I really, really wanted to happen for my birthday, and my answer was that there’s something I want to *not* happen – I don’t want to do what my dad did and drive somebody’s car into a bank on my 40th birthday. Thanks for the great stories, dad!

She called me the next day with a serious question, and to make a long story short, Tim and I are going to Boston for our birthday! They also brought me to Boston for my sixteenth birthday (holy crap, really? TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO? ADLJA;DFJA;SLDFJ!!! And ooo – I just realized, in doing the math, that my 16th must have also been Aunt Gay’s 40th! Did I know that at the time…?) and again for my eighteenth, although I can’t easily lay my fingers on that photo.

So at 6 in the morning on Wednesday, October 7th, Tim and I will board a big silver bird and fly off into the sunrise for a relaxing, lobster-filled week in Boston. With my loving, wonderful, generous, fabulous family and a few close friends. And my friend Lucy’s yarn shop. Did I mention there will be much relaxing? Also some lobster. AND A ZOO. I am hoping to get near a giraffe.