The Grown-up Birthday

Happy Birthday to me. Yay birthdays. Please read both of these statements with the sarcasm with which they were intended. Trust me when I say, I do. 

One candle too many.

When did I really grow up? When did birthdays become more of a chore and less of a happy day to look forward to? When I was a little girl, heck even when I was a teenager, I can remember looking forward to birthdays with such excitement and enthusiasm that I could barely sleep at night. I would count down the days with anticipation and fervor, gleefully imagining the cake, the presents, the intense joy of the day. 

I'm most definitely not a little girl anymore. Don't let me fool you completely. I still get excited. As I've said before, I'm a pretty excitable kind of person. I get excited about the simple things in life: the food, the deep, engrossing conversations with my hubby, the craziness of the cats, the dry wit and lovable humor of my crazy family. But my birthday? Not so much anymore. 

I'm 28. There, I said it. And no, I'm not going to pretend that I'm as old as the hills when I know good and well that I'm in my twenties and have no right to be complaining about age. But I think I have finally reached that age where age seems a little more important than it used to. The significance of the number is not so important as the number it's bringing me closer to: 30. Thirty's not old either. I realize that. But thirty is officially out of the twenties...and that's a little scary. There are so many things that I want to do by 30, so many things I want to have accomplished. I look at other women the same age as me, and even in some cases younger than me, and I see all that they've accomplished, and I think to myself, what the hell have you done lately?

Sure, I'm pretty successful. If not in career, then in life. I have a wonderful husband who adores me (and whom I adore), a solid roof over my head, and three cats who may or may not want to kill me. Plus, I have the most rocking family that a girl could ever ask for. I pretty much have everything I could possibly want for my birthday...which is maybe why birthdays aren't quite as exciting as they used to be.

So in an effort to up the excitement level a tad, I came up with a birthday wish list of things I'd like for (either on or before) my thirtieth birthday...two years from today:

1) A Career as a Writer. Notice, this one is NUMBER ONE for a reason, and if I got this, I really wouldn't care so much about the rest. When I first graduated college, I tried the whole freelancing thing. Didn't quite work out. Turns out a freelance writer's income (at least when they start out) is pretty sporadic-like. Pretty soon I realized I would either be living with my parents forever or starving to death in some match-box apartment if I didn't come up with a day job. Before my thirtieth birthday, I want writing to BE my day job.

 2) Travel to Ireland Japan Somewhere Anywhere Outside the US.  I don't want to wake up one day and realize that my life has passed me by without fulfilling my dream to travel...at least once...outside the US.

3) To Finish My Novel. I only started this a few months ago, but in two years, if I haven't finished it, I'm going to kick my own ass.

4) Hardwood Floors in Living Room and Hallway. Ah, my shallow, materialistic wish. Jeremy and I aren't like a lot of families nowadays. When we purchased our home, we purchased it with the express intent of living in it until we retire and beyond. This isn't a "starter home" for us (and I'm not saying anything about anyone who buys homes this way...it just isn't for us); it's a forever home. I have roots in this place, and I want to grow old here and make as many improvements along the way as we can.

5) Baby. Baby Not. I want to have the whole Baby Question figured out by thirty. If we don't know by then, we're going to figure it out.

Now don't all y'all rush out and spend all your money getting me these things just yet. Remember we've got a couple of years to go, and as fickle as I am, I'll probably have changed my mind on what I want by then. In the meantime, I'll enjoy this my twenty-eighth birthday, my grown-up birthday of too many candles and never enough cake.