Effing Old.

Tomorrow morning I will be thirty years old.

But tonight...tonight I'm still "in my twenties." The world is still my oyster and I can still be anything I want to be if I put my mind to it. I'm not yet fully expected to have two or three kids running around. I'm still culturally relevant to high schoolers and college kids. In bustling metropolitan cities, I'd be a young, hip working woman with the world at her perfectly pedicured feet.

Tomorrow I will be something else entirely.

Tonight it's quiet. The hubby has already gone to bed and it's just me and the dogs basking in the lavender light of a flatscreen monitor. I can't help but feel very alone at a moment like this, but it's one of those empowering "life lesson" lonelies where I feel more independent, more grown up than usual. (As most of you know, I spend much of my time watching sports, cartoons and sci-fi...so I don't devote much time to achieving a "mature" state of mind.)

I am surprised at how melancholy I feel though! I expected a certain amount of "fictional sadness"...the kind of emotion you adopt because commercials and movies and TV and literature have all dictated what is a reasonable level of reaction to these big life events. But even more than that, I really do feel physically ill about going in to work tomorrow! It's like I WANT people to recognize that it's a big day for me, but I also don't want to be thrown into the limelight on account of a depressing birthday. Signs all over the building, an office full of packing peanuts, cards and black tissue paper and an organized lunch... I think I'd just rather it pass relatively unnoticed. I think...