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Maybe I should wait to see how I feel next year, but I turn 49 at the end of the week (happy birthday to me!), but I don’t feel about the end of my 40s as I did about the end of my 30s.

I struggled with turning 40 and saying goodbye to my 30s, mostly because I saw 30 as the decade that brought me the twins whereas 40 would be the decade that would see the twins leave home.

I don’t feel the same anxiety about switching decades — at least, not yet. I feel grateful that I’ve reached this point. Many don’t. Instead of lamenting my grey hair — greyer than it was a decade ago — I feel lucky that I’m still alive to style my grey hair. I feel lucky that I have Josh and the twins and the rest of my family and friends. I feel lucky that I know what I do well and what I’m okay with not being able to do.

My questions now circle where the twins will be vs. who I will be.

I’m okay. I’m still dreading the twins leaving home, but a birthday won’t change that. So cake at the end of the week along with graduation. I just have to keep reminding myself that I can do hard things.

I was driving home a few weeks ago and suddenly couldn’t remember how old I was. Was I 47? 48? Simple math brought me to the correct year. A few days after that, someone said they were turning 50, and I thought, “50 is old.” And then realized I would be turning 50 in a few years, and it is my birthday this week.

Gulp.

I’m clearly having trouble with aging. I want to age in the sense that I don’t want the alternative, but I’m not really a fan of this aging thing. It ceases to be fun once you reach a certain point.

Or maybe you have to make it fun.

At some point, we’ll do a day trip to the beach and eat French fries for lunch and read books on the sand, a tradition we started when I turned 40. That will be good. And I’ll hopefully remember my age.

Happy birthday to me.

It’s my birthday today, which means that I have a new immortal friend. Except this time, it’s a polar bear, and this time there are TWO of them––twin immortal polar bears.

The first is named Hillel. I decided to keep with the theme of Jewish philosophers––Akiva, the immortal quokka, Hillel, the immortal polar bear––because my animals are also very wise. You can tell by looking at their furry faces:

I am calling him Hilly, for short. Mostly because I had a friend in college named Hillel that we also called Hilly or Hils. And I always thought that was super-cute.

I was only expecting one polar bear but two showed up. So I named the second one Houdin after Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the father of modern magic. He is from Blois, a city that is special to our family, and… well… I love real magic AND fake magic.

Hillel and Houdin. H is pronounced in Hillel and not in Houdin.

Stuffed representations of my very real, very immortal polar bears.

So… my birthday. I am having big feelings about this birthday. I had a hard time leading up to it, and I’m having a hard time today.

I wish I could cuddle up with the real Hilly and Houdin, though I imagine that if I tried to burrow into their fur that it would smell like fish and sea water. (Let’s not talk about what bears could do to a small lady and pretend that Hilly and Houdin would never harm someone who loves them this much.) But since cuddling with the real Hilly and Houdin is not possible, I’ll just gorge on ice cream instead.

Happy birthday to me.

Josh got me a real, live, immortal quokka* for my 44th birthday.  Technically, he needs to keep living his immortal life in western Australia, but he’s totally mine.  And I’m his.  And his name is Akiva.

But I call him “Keevs” for short.

We got him from the World Wildlife Fund.  Apparently they believe this is just a monetary donation and they’ve given Josh a certificate in return.  BUT NOPE.  He is totally mine.  I have his picture up on the refrigerator, and I’ve been filling in his back story; how he spends his days and the fun we’ll have together when I finally get to Rottnest Island so I can watch him frolicking with his quokka friends.

So Akiva will live forever in Rottnest Island, and I will bore the family forever with imagined tales of Avika’s hijinks.

I LOVE MY QUOKKA.

This is the best birthday ever.  Happy birthday to meeeeeeeeee.  (And Akiva, who is an extension of my heart.  I love my quokka so much.)

* World Wildlife Fund said they couldn’t put status of his immortality on the certificate itself, but they let Josh add it to the message so I have it formally in writing because I hate the idea of being given something that will die.  My quokka will never die.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I read a very old post and I loved the idea, so I’m throwing it out here.  An accomplishment box.  It’s impossible to believe that you’re not getting stuff done when you’re faced with a clear jar filled with tiny slips of paper detailing what you’ve done.

The idea is that when you feel good — when you check something big off your list or get praise at work — you write it on a slip of paper and drop it in the jar.  It’s not just helpful when you’re working on your resume down the road; it’s there when you’re having a crap day and feeling like you’re not achieving anything.  You can look in the jar and have hard-and-fast proof that it’s your mood talking and not reality.

My most recent slips would be finishing an animation for work and donating the baby stuff.

What’s going on your slip?

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