Thursday, February 3, 2011

29

Today I turned 29 years old. Holy crap.
I'm pretty used to be the youngest person in the room. I've tended to do things earlier than others, and have always been pretty comfortable with people a few years ahead of me.

This is not so much the case anymore. I have a couple new employees these days, and they are 24 and 25 years old. Now, I feel about 300 years older than them. This has so much less to do with being 29, and more to do with the really obnoxious, "when I was your age" thoughts I keep having. At 24, I was married and working to support my little family. At 25, I'd had my first kid. I think that's what makes you old, realizing that the "young kids" might only be a few years behind you, but their experiences are already completely different. The social context changes so fast. Songs and movies that were so present in my childhood are completely off their radar. It makes you feel socially irrelevant, no matter how old or young you are.

Meanwhile, the house is almost finished. The only thing left to do before moving in: painting the living room and hallways, and cleaning the shit out of the place.

I'm actually really excited that there is not going to be a single white wall in the entire house. After renting for more than a decade, I'm so done with the "fuck it all" rental white every landlord in the world paints their properties. I get it, white is cheap, and easy to fix when your tenant jacks up your walls. It's also so glaringly impersonal it make me want to gouge my eyes out. But maybe that's just me.

Poor Xtian has spent every single day painting from whenever I can get home from work, until 3 or 4 am. I think he might be getting a little too old for pulling all-nighters. Especially when his "day job" is still parenting two children at challenging ages. I think a couple more days of work, and he'll be finished.

I'm having a really hard time mustering any enthusiasm for my birthday. Some of it is the old, "Well I have to work, and none of my chores stop, so it's really just another day" and that by the time my birthday rolls around, we've already had half a dozen other birthdays in a week, so I'm a little birthdayed out. And of course, Lennox's birthday (a few days after mine) now takes precedence. But another part is that, I don't make enough effort to make it special, then I feel crummy when no one else makes a big deal about it. Yes, it's passive aggressive and annoying. I'm working on that.

So, musings on 29 years worth of existence.  Huzzah!

2 comments:

Faith said...

Firstly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU AWESOME MAMA, YOU! :D

I'm coming up on 37 myself this next week (huzzah! right back atcha...:)), and I'm celebrating by giving myself a spa day. I am very excited.

I don't need birthday parties for ages like this. I don't need special presents, or cards, or anything like that. I just need to recognize that getting older happens, and try to ease it in by having my back rubbed and my toenails painted a pretty color.

(And then eating crab legs until I burst, but that might be a weird part of the celebration to some...)

Anyway, do something nice for yourself, if you can. Take the time to get a pedicure. And to sit in a massage chair and read a silly magazine and not have to think about work, or husbands, or behbehs, or anything like that. It doesn't take much to make yourself feel special. That's what I've discovered in my process of getting older. :)

April said...

Happy belated birthday.

I can totally relate to everything you wrote. I remember always being the youngest one in the office. The ladies would always talk to me about, "When I was your age.." and I would get so irritated. Now, I'm 33 (as of yesterday) and I find myself working with some college girls who use the word "like" entirely too much. The things they find trivial and profound are just ridiculous to me. I think of the, "When I was your age.." crap all.the.time!

I felt REALLY old when I brought up dancing around to Paula Abdul when I was a kid and one of the girls I worked with said, "She had an album out? I just thought she was famous because of American Idol."

I'm completely irritated with the current music. Anyone who takes Kesha and her music seriously HAS to be an imbecile in my book. The fact there's even a market for her type of music makes me want to puke. The same thing with Britney Spears and Miley Cirus. I remember amazing music sung by artists with amazing voices. Today? Not so much.

I just had my birthday yesterday and it was the first time in a long time where I didn't feel even somewhat excited. I didn't talk to my friends or family about it or mention it to my coworkers. It was just another day. I tried mentioning it on my blog as sort of a countdown in parenthesis, but that didn't last either.

Just blah.

Anyway, I feel ya on everything!