in which I am 40-something-else

Concluding Birthday Season I in our family, I am now Even Older.  (Doesn't that get on your nerves, when people who aren't remotely elderly talk about how oooollld they are?  Mine too.  Get off my lawn. Oh wait. OK, I'll get off my own lawn.  But I'll be back on it before long, as it's about to need mowing.)

I had a lovely birthday, which started when my lovely husband made sure I was exempted from getting our lovely daughters ready for school.  I was supposed to sleep in, but was wide awake at the usual time.  Grrrr.  He also made me a beautiful chocolate cake, and I can now say definitively that the chocolate frosting recipe on the back of the unsweetened cocoa label is much superior to the one I'd been using for years.  Riveting news, I know.  But chocolate frosting improvements are always cause for good cheer.

I got a fishing pole and a Nancy Drew book and a Black Eyed Peas CD (the one with the boom-boom-pow song that I can't stop singing. "Them chickens jackin' my style," and stuff!) and Season 3 of The Muppet Show.  The Muppet Show makes me very happy.  Also a new novel, socks with flamingos on them, and a Life Is Good t-shirt.  And it is, folks, it is.

In other news you will be delighted to know that I finally finished the biography of George Washington that I've been reading on and off for FIVE YEARS now.  Of which more later.  My cat-herding exemption was for one morning only, so I'd better hit the hay.