40 Candles

So this happened a few days ago:



Yep, I turned 29 again!



Okay, fine.

29 plus....11.

(Sheesh. You made the old lady cry. Are you happy now?)

As those of you who have seen me at all recently know, I kvetched and moaned for the better part of the month of July about turning 29 plus 11.

David took me out to dinner at a lovely local restaurant on the night before the Big Day, and at one point during the meal, I said, rather dramatically, "This is the last night of my youth!"

David calmly took another bite of his grilled catfish and said dryly, "And tomorrow morning, you're going to wake up, and you're going to be... exactly the same."

Yup. I was. I am. And my parents , especially my dad, took great delight in honoring the grand occasion. Check out the cane and the tiara that I'm wearing in the photo above. What you can't see in the photo, however, are all the "I'm 40!" and "Happy 40th Birthday" decorations and the giant massive bunch of helium-filled black balloons that filled my front hall. Mom and Dad had a lot of fun at Party City, clearly.

At any rate, here I am. A former coworker of mine posted a happy birthday message on my Facebook page and asked if I remembered the old show "thirtysomething" and how it was always about drama and how messed up people's lives were? "Now you're past all that!" James wrote cheerfully. (He's over 40 himself, so he can say these things.)

It's all a state of mind. Well, mostly. But I really can't blame 40 for the gray hairs I'm starting to get. The blame should and does rest squarely on the shoulders of the Wyckoff Brothers.

Not that I don't love them, of course.

I mean, come on. How could I not love this?



Or this, my two sweet boys and husband, gamely posing for me for yet another picture at Turner Field during our recent trip to see the Braves play?

I like my treats to be chocolate

Okay, I have to share this little anecdote, which I also recently posted on Facebook, but it still makes me giggle, so.

Some background: Twice this year, I managed to land a Groupon for the local Sushi Train restaurant, and we've taken a lunchtime field trip there to spend it. This is a guaranteed big hit. The boys love...I mean LOVE....sushi. Andrew can easily eat a dozen pieces, and William can probably put away twice that amount. They don't do raw, yet, but that's about their only limitation at this point. They also adore the concept of a place where they can pick out the little plates of sushi themselves as they cruise by on the conveyor belt. That's big-time awesome when you're eight or four years old.

At our most recent trip to Sushi Train, the boys were finally, finally hitting their limit on sushi, and I spotted a bowl of steamed salted edamame on the "train." I quickly grabbed it and began digging into it with gusto.

"Look, Andrew!" I said. "When you pop open the pods, you get some of the salt from them on the beans and they taste all salty and delicious. It's such a nice little treat."

Andrew remained unconvinced, but I guess he was trying to be as tactful as a four-year-old can possibly be.
"I like my treats to be chocolate," he said.