I turn forty-one today.
Yay.
However I might have liked to spend this day, what I did was sit for three and a half hours at an auto repair shop. A tire blew out on my yesterday, and the lug nuts were on so tight, the stud holding one of them snapped off while I was changing it. (Which is the better porno name--Stud Lugnuts or Lug Studnuts?) I hoped the tire could be repaired, at least, but no, I needed a new one, and a gear for the axle, which I knew was bad, had reached critical mass.
So I sat, reading a two week old issue of Time, listening to a local easy listening station. In the time I waited, I heard two different Tony Orlando songs, drank two cans of soda, listened to some asshole middle management guy "run some numbers by yuh" on his cellphone, and saw the parts guy twice deliver the wrong stud for my car.
Happy Fucking Birthday.
It's not like I had better things to do. Well, I should have been working, earning the money (four hundred bucks!) to pay for this. But no, I figured I should be at the garage in case I had to sign off on anything. And it's not like I'll be doing anything after this. I don't feel much like celebrating.
Both of my parents died before they reached eighty, so I figure at my age, my life is more than half over. My social life doesn't exist. There's nothing I feel like doing, no private ritual I must perform to mark this occasion. I'll probably go have some Chinese food and read The New York Times, then maybe swing by the library. Excitement, she wrote.
But I had a pretty good weekend--except for the blown tire--so I shouldn't complain. As I take stock of my life on this day, it's had more lows than highs, but it hasn't been a bad ride. Good things continue to happen when I least expect them, so there's no reason to despair for the future. I can't say I'm doing well, but I'm not doing badly.
So again, yay.
Happy Birthday, Me.
