Last year when I turned forty, it was such a milestone that I wrote a four-part series about it. This year, I turned forty-one, a pretty anticlimactic age if you ask me. Nobody writes advice columns or songs or movies about turning forty-one. Life just thrusts you into the forty-something category against your will, and suddenly you're diving headfirst toward middle age like a torpedo. That is, until your head hits the concrete at the bottom of the pool.
I'm only kidding. 😃
I enjoyed my forty-first birthday. I celebrated it for two weekends in a row. It reminded me of one of my favorite books when I was a child, Raggedy Ann and Andy: Five Birthday Parties in a Row. (On eBay, it's being sold as a "vintage" book, copyright 1979. Torpedoes away!)
Over Memorial Day weekend, my family came into town to go to the zoo and Chuck E. Cheese's. They surprised me with a cake and gifts even though my birthday was still a week away.
My husband, Dan, and I also went to Sun Valley that weekend and stayed at the newly renovated Lodge, another birthday surprise since he had led me to believe there were no rooms available.
"Wait, isn't that where you need to turn?" I asked as we passed the Best Western in Ketchum.
He glanced at me sideways and stayed silent. He was obviously pleased with himself.
The following weekend, we went on my "birthday date." We ate at The Melting Pot and saw the new Melissa McCarthy movie. Dan got me the Amelia Earhart doll from Barbie's new Inspiring Women Series and the reissued Liz Phair album, gifts fit for the youthful gal that I am.
On my actual birthday, I listened to Liz Phair while I ran on the Greenbelt and thought, "This forty-one-year-old is hip and happening."
I also met some teacher friends for lunch on, but not because of, my birthday and had an excuse to dress up and get out of my yoga pants.
Ah, yoga pants. I can already tell that yoga pants are a precious commodity as I enter my forties.
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