I’m currently walking around with a pair of cream colored bedroom shoes in my hands. They’re my mom’s. She bought them for the chilly Vermont winters when she comes to visit. I think they look like someone skinned a clinically depressed sheep then made an even sadder pair of shoes from that poor bastard’s hide. Meanwhile, my son is spitting his water-juice into the bathtub. Weird times.

Anyhow, I wanted to talk about my birthday. My first draft of this post was really sad: recounting all the bad birthdays, like the one where I came back from the dead, to my fortieth, which wasn’t stellar, but which resulted in me getting some fossils as a present, so it turned out okay. I love fossils and what better birthday present than something a million years old? Puts my age into perspective.

Last week was my forty hmm hmmth birthday, and like the rest of the entire world, I couldn’t go anywhere to celebrate. S’okay. Birthday celebrations for me usually involve an obscene amount of sushi carefully placed on a tiny boat. There’s wine and perhaps a cake. As I don’t (can’t?) make my own sushi, and I don’t own a tiny wooden boat (yet) a sushi feast was (literally) off the table for me.

As I learned from my fortieth, if you want a good birthday, you might need to make it happen for yourself. I told Husband exactly what I wanted, and I got it. I bought my own birthday cake and a $20 slice of meaty heaven called “filet mignon.” Then, being the fancy bish I am, I cooked the formerly mooing slice of manna in a sous vide bath and had some wine while the fellas played outside. I also painted a cardboard box to put over my head for a little project.

I’m a little shy about being on video camera, as I feel weird knowing that things are out there forever and I also feel incredibly vulnerable. So when I had a request to film myself(!!) doing the second line of Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, the first thing I wanted to do was cover my head. So I did. I worked on it and filmed the line and it served as a little creative respite from the quarantine sludge-brain.

After the fancy dinner, cake, bath and bedtime for Boychild, I decided to take a little taste of a pot cookie. Let me start by saying that I have nibbled the devil’s baked good every now and then, so I am no stranger to the edibles; however, I haven’t had a nosh since BC was born and I used the tiny crumbs to go to sleep, and so ate very little. Since it was my birthday, I decided to have a full ¼ of a cookie. Big mistake?

Did you know it takes a pot cookie a while to kick in? I was on the couch watching Westworld with Husband thinking, “okay, I guess I didn’t eat enough pot cookie.” About half an hour later, I went to the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I suddenly started laughing about Robert Frost. Just, cackling. Like, “Two Roads diverged in yellow wood? Hahahahahahaha!!” It was then I knew I needed to lie down. I had the mad giggles in bed, then I decided I didn’t want to be alone, so I implored my dear husband to come lay beside me. In my head, it sounded like “Dearest husband, I know that I am an advanced forty hmm-hmm years old, but I clearly cannot handle my shit. Wouldst thou be so kind as to come rest beside me while I chuckle at nothing?” But it came out something like “Hey- Bed. Can you . . . ?” And he did.

I lay in bed having a great time until I realized I was too stoned to move. Uh-oh. Then I got paranoid. “What if I pee the bed? I’m totally going to pee the bed. I like this bed! I don’t want to pee the bed. I’ll be so embarrassed! Oh my God. I wish I were a mermaid.” Then I had a moment of clarity: so what if I pee the bed? It’s only a bed. You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re fine.

And I was. I lived to tell the tale. I hope to make it to my next birthday. If I do,  I think I’ll stick to the wine and cake. And I’ll keep on telling myself “you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.”