Hippo Bird Day

So, it's really weird to get older and see your skin start to wrinkle on your face and neck and to want to wear- oh, hellz, and to wear- clothes you wore 5 years ago, and see that there are wrinkles in new places when you put on a particularly low cut top, and that kind of thing.

I think people aren't kidding about the midlife thing. I know, I am refusing to admit I am halfway there. Crap, there is still so much to do in this life, and as I get slower and slower, I realize it's going to take longer and longer. I do need to 100 for sure!

But on the one hand I think about how I have given myself the best birthday present I could give my own self, which is once again to get a lot of people I think so highly of in one place and watch them connect... but at the next moment sort of pining for something else, something insanely materialistic: a body that's elastic, skin that's elastic, so my back doesn't go out every time I lift weights with any commitment, and my neck doesn't look like that of a goddam chicken with its feathers yanked out. And a gutsack that's normal, that doesn't bloat when I think the word "bloat"... a metaboilism that allows me to drink the fine single malt scotch Bill sent for my birthday neat, as opposed to on ice so that it's cold...

Speaking of Bill, thanks to all the incredibly thoughtful people who surround me for all your generosity at birthday time: Bill for the VT care package- and the scotch!- even though the organic raspberry jam broke in the box; Jen for the flowers; the Queen for the pear candle that will likely never be lit, despite admonitions that is what it's for; Stevil for breakfast tomorrow; Lanbo for the sparkly earrings; Audrey and Vincent for the fine Chinese opera hanger; everyone for the cards, the packages I am not allowed to open yet, the well-wishers far away but online; and mostly to all the people who convene around me to have a good time, which is what life is about- at least part of the time, when things like neck skin sagging don't consume us.