Birthday Number Forty

 Well then. I'm 40.

Do I look 40? Well, I look more like it than I don't.

Do I feel 40? Very yes.

I'm sitting here at my desk wearing a decade-old ugly Christmas sweater and the nerdiest pair of glasses I own. I have been trying to grow by beard back out since Halloween and it is...growing slowly. Every day I see more gray in my beard and in my hair than ever before. I'm guessing I have less than five years before I'm more gray than any other color. 

My eyes hurt. My joints ache. Did my eyes always hurt and did my joints always ache? I don't know. I don't remember a time where they didn't, to be honest with all of you. 

My 40th birthday is bittersweet because of multiple reasons. I always said as a teenager (and even well into college) something along the lines of "psh, like I'll make it to 40" as if that was a far off future time, far off future year. Well, I guess back then it really was, but 2022 came fast and the future is now, old man. 

My 40th birthday also starts this year's Christmas vacation for me, which is bittersweet because yes, while I do get some of that fabled, precious time off, the weather is going to be atrocious starting tomorrow -- up to 7 inches of snow predicted and temperatures expected to be below zero for highs pretty much now through Christmas, with windchills of up to -50. No, I'm not making that up. I don't know when I decided to live north of The Wall, but I am no longer here for it. 

This weather has thrown a wrench into almost all of our plans leading up to actual Christmas. As you folks know, I only want one thing for my birthday every year -- a tattoo. I got my first in 2019, had to skip 2020 because of the pandemic, and last year got my second. This year (well, as you can see), my birthday is on a Tuesday. Having a Tuesday birthday and a Sunday Christmas is like the worst possible pairing for any sort of holiday celebrations ever. Tuesday is right in the middle of my work week, and with Christmas being Sunday it's like nobody's schedules really change for businesses and/or industries. Holiday is on the weekend? Cool, work normally right up to it and then go right back to work after it. It doesn't feel like a holiday. It just feels like a normal day off before going right back to the grind.

I took off my birthday and the two following days -- days I had to submit PTO for because holiday time off in the United States is a fucking joke -- and took off the day after Christmas too. I wholeheartedly recommend this for anyone who can do it -- never work the first business day after a major holiday if you can take it off. If you work that day, especially if you work in a service industry, you will deal with vast multitudes of bullshit that you'd normally not see otherwise. We call it "holiday fallout" in my job. And I've already reached the point of the holidays where I'm very glad I work from home, because I'm pretty sure the clients and my bosses would not appreciate how loudly I say Oh go fuck yourself, it's Christmas to any bitchy email that hits my inbox this time of year. 

Anyway, I digress.

My birthday itself was fine. I worked the overnight before, got up in the afternoon and got ready, and Daisy and I went to her parents' for dinner -- a poutine dinner, as is tradition:

This was then followed up by the birthday gift I'd asked Daisy for -- her famous pecan pie. 

Mama had quilted a long banner for me with a moose on it; she must have spent hours making it, if not days. It's beautiful, and will soon hang above my desk on the wall here in my office. I'll likely take a picture and share here once I get it put up.

Afterwards, on the way home we stopped at the local vape shop because I had a huge birthday coupon that I wanted to use in order to get a few more disposables (which I did) and, for the first time since summer, a bit more juice to try to use up the last of my tanks.

We then returned home in the single-digit cold and I passed out in my chair.

So, the full list of 40th birthday things are, in no particular order:

• 96 people wishing me happy birthday via Facebook
• Zero people wishing me happy birthday via Twitter
• Six birthday texts
• Four messenger IMs from friends/family who had not posted on my actual Facebook
• Three "happy belated birthday" messages
• Three birthday cards (one from my parents, one from Daisy's, and one from my aunt)
• Zero tattoos

The tattoo thing was expected. Because of the extreme cold/winter storm coming in, plus knowing that we wouldn't even be able to get to a tattoo studio before dinner with the parents -- much less get one done, that was put on hold. We're now expecting to get my yearly birthday tattoo on Monday, the 26th...weather permitting there as well, of course, and also if the studio I like is resuming normal business hours on that Monday (since Christmas is Sunday). I've already told Daisy that if it doesn't happen, eh, it's not a big deal.

So that was my 40th. It was a good day. I enjoyed it. The end.