Happy Birthday, everyone!

No matter how hard you try to stop it, time continues marching on.  Marching, marching, perhaps faltering, limping, staggering, and finally crawling along to the ripe old 29th year.  

It’s here.  The age I will be for the rest of my life is finally here.  (women don't advance past 29, right?)

blowing out the candle on my birthday donut, courtesy of my mom.  Please forgive the OBVIOUS just-woke-up syndrome.

It’s not that I’m feeling all old or anything.  (No, that only happens when I go to weddings for kids I remember being born or babysitting when they were three) (or when I think about how I just missed my 10 year high school reunion) (or realize that my nephew who was born when I was 13 is now older than I was when he was born) (OR when teenagers I go to church with say something like, “You were born in the 80’s?!?!?  Wow.”)

It’s just that I never thought I’d ever be this old.

he always looks good, even when he just woke up.  Why, yes, that IS a green sprinkle stuck to his nose.

When you are young, you just want to be a grown up.  You see all those super fun things that grown ups get to do - stay up super late, eat dessert for dinner, cook with open flame, shop with those cool cards that don’t even require you to use money so you can get anything you want, go outside after dark, walk across the street without holding hands, ALL KINDS OF COOL THINGS!  And you think about, and you calculate the years it will take to reach adulthood (as best as you can when you are bad at math) and you realize that it will NEVER HAPPEN.  Ever.  The years are just too great to ever reach that point.

Then you watch your siblings get older and older.  They age, but of course, you don’t.  They are always 6 steps ahead of you, at least, and there is no way you will ever arrive at any point they arrive at.  You will never drive, kiss a boy, go to college, get married... you will obviously never be old enough to have a family of your own.

And then at some point, you’re suddenly old.  There are all these years of reaching and straining and wanting and seeking that you don’t even see it coming.  You’ve got two kids, a mortgage, a car payment, debt to your eyeballs, surgeries that are only for old people, and the need to go to bed early.  

So what do we do about it?  We celebrate.

That’s right, everyone.  In honor of my birthday, which is today, by the way (or I guess yesterday as some of you will read this tomorrow) (haha, could I be more ambiguous?) I’d like to give three lucky readers a birthday present!  (Not on your birthday, but on MY birthday.  Or, a few days after anyway...)  I’m giving three lucky duckys a custom rolled rose headband, barrette, pin or earrings - their choice - in the colors of their choice.  You know, like these

or these.

I know, I know, I’d love to give you something even cooler, but this will have to suffice.  

All you have to do is leave a comment below with the custom creation of your choice (item and color) and your email.  I’ll leave it open this weekend, and on Monday I’ll have that random number generator thingymajig pick three numbers and I’ll let you know who you are!  (You all know how it works,  I don’t have to explain all this, right?)

So, leave me a comment, and tell other people, because if there are only like two comments here I’m gonna be really sad.

Happy Birthday (me)!

thanks, mom!