40.

According to an internet search, I share this same celebratory-revolution-around-the-sun date with 268 “celebrities”, most of whom I’ve never heard of, aside from Rowan Atkinson, Nigella Lawson, and Khalil Gibran.

Interesting.

Of the three, I imagine I’d prefer to celebrate with Mr. Bean and Khalil Gibran’s ghost. Nigella can cater.

It was a pretty chilled out day. I took the day off and skied with my husband and a friend while the kids were at school. I’ve been awake since 330 am, because apparently, when you’re forty, you just wake up for no reason at all and then stay that way.

COVID threw a wrench in the original plans of a bike tour of France or Spain in the spring, or hitting up Japan for a ski tour of Niseko or Hakuba. (But this meant I could justify buying the pimped out dirt jumper.) Recent restrictions also threw a wrench in drinks at a pub, or even a driveway gathering.

We are lucky enough here that the mountain remains open.
With the snow, revised restrictions, and limits on resort capacity, the lineups are long for a weekday. The alpine takes forever to bomb and open, and it’s a spicy lactic burn in the legs to remind you that no matter how hard you work, the shape you’re trying to get into never really comes. Especially on a powder day.
We skied three mellow runs.
Far too many fellow humans have died in the nearby backcountry in the past week or two. Avalanche risk ratings are sky high, and the continuous snow has resulted in friends fishing people out of what could have been snowy graves, even within resort boundary.
It was our first day out this whole season. Let’s not try to kill ourselves, yeah? On my birthday no less.
So cruisy groomers it was. Turns out my body remembers what to do, so the itch has been piqued to get up to steeper and deeper terrain in the next couple days. I figure I can probably last a solid three or four hours. Not sure I could put in a whole day yet.

So. Four decades. I don’t really remember the first two.

I have no wisdom gained. No witty insights. All I know is that now I am now at the point where I will need annual mammograms, and I can probably get away with having to pay for only one more IUD before menopause hits. Oh, and I’m in a new age category for races, one that will hopefully give me an advantage.
The hubs and kids and I went out for dinner, and my daughter suggested we dress up. I tried on two different winter dresses (i.e. with sleeves), then promptly put them in to my donate pile because they make my arms and shoulders look like they belong to a matronly linebacker. It’s a weird combo of muscle and that soft doughy look that moms get, and it is, let me tell you, exceptionally disturbing. I don’t often wear dresses, so I imagine that I must have bought these dresses in an era where they looked good. Maybe. At some point. Sigh.

I got a phone call from two of my old housemates last night. Haven’t heard from them in ages. They’re in a time zone three hours ahead, and were keen to be the first to wish me a happy birthday. We shared a house in my fourth year of undergrad, and one of them was my med school classmate thereafter. One is an ER doc, and the other the head of the Hospitalist department in a suburban Ontario hospital, where they are dealing with COVID in sh*t-show proportions, as they’re now opening field hospitals to deal with numbers. One has gotten his vaccine, the other is waiting. I’m not due for mine until March at the earliest.
They are as brothers to me, as the dynamic in my fourth year undergrad house was the perfect balance. I’ve lived with all girls, all guys, mixes of crazy, switching it up ever four to eight months, and that year, I finally got it right in choosing housemates. Plus we had a bomb-ass old lady house with a great layout.
You know how certain sounds and smells can evoke vivid memory?
Hearing their voices last night, their banter, I picture could their faces, their expressions in my mind. I remember our kitchen, and how many charred chicken wings inhabited the oven (cooking is not, in this day and age, a life skill. It just makes life more convenient and affordable if you can do it. And alas, I cannot). There was that one cozy chair in the living room that I’d always settle in to study on, then promptly fall asleep. There was the weird wood paneling in the basement, the red carpet in the powder room, the dusty rose carpet in the living room, and the cherry on top? Lacy curtains.
There were three bad romantic endeavours that year, and I know my housemates remember those too, because they had to put up with me for all of them. I don’t remember anything about school though.

A friend and colleague sent me a postcard with a photo of a banyan tree that said, “A reminder that 40 is not old.. if you’re a tree.” He is, for reference, 60. Uh, thanks. I will remember that.

So.
Forty.
Still flighty. Still ostrich in the sand because every time I turn on the news it’s like, “AMERICA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!?”

Back to bikes and skis and mountains and fam-jam time, please. And devising ways to retire early. 🙂