ANOTHER DAY OLDER AND . . .

by Gina Sestak

Good morning, gentle readers.  It's been an eventful week.  Not as eventful as the final day of last year, when my car was totaled by a drunk driver fleeing police, but eventful nonetheless.

For one thing, I had a birthday.  I am now officially old enough to collect early social security - 62(!).

I've had two parties and lunch, and gotten several gifts, mostly gift cards, which is good.  For myself, I bought a prep table for my kitchen, where there's way too little counter space.  I'm hoping I can resist my usual impulse to cover it with piles of stuff so there will be room to cook.

When I was young, I always expected to have life figured out by now, or at least have some idea what I wanted to be when I grew up.  No such luck.  I tell people that I'm very immature for my age.  They think I'm kidding.

So, what have I done with my life?  Not much, I'm afraid.  I grew up.  I got educated.  I got a lot of jobs.  I got married.  We bought a house.  I got divorced.  I kept the house.  The house caught fire.

Sorry.  Getting older leads to introspection.

Ahem.  How I spent my life, by Regina Marie Sestak:

Well, just look back at my early posts.  The whole story is there.

Right now, things are going pretty well.  I got a brand new car, courtesy of State Farm Insurance.  It pays to keep up those premiums!

The new car - a bottom-of-the-line Chevy - even drives well in the snow, which I've been shoveling a lot these last few days.

I'm still writing novels and short stories and still not getting published.  Maybe someday I'll give that up, but not quite yet.  Right now, there are still too many things I want to write about.  And it's not as if I've never been published.  Just not recently.  And not fiction.

I'm still writing screenplays, although none of them has been made into a film yet.  I'm crossing my fingers

but not holding my breath on this year's entries in the Steeltown Entertainment contest.  I'm pinning most of my hopes on Alcyone Pictures, though.  Does anybody want to invest in a movie?

I've also activated my account with Mosser Casting.  Does anybody want to put me in a movie?

See what I mean about being immature for my age?  I should be winding down, thinking about long term investments and looking forward to Medicare, not chasing dreams.  

Instead, I'm working part-time at a law job, making enough to live on (now that the house is all paid off) and investing in dvds of Bollywood films.   Go figure.

Today's clip is from Billu.  Billu (Irrfan Khan) is an unsuccessful barber until a movie company comes to film in his small rural village and word gets out that Billu knows the film's star, Sahir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan).  Then everybody seeks Billu's company, except the elusive Sahir, leading to all kinds of complications.

Billu is one of the guys sitting in the tree, trying to get Sahir's attention.  Sahir is the primary male dancer.       Not to be a spoiler, but it all really does come out right in the end.

Oddly enough, four out of seven regulars in my critique group have had birthdays within the last month.  Maybe it's a writer thing.  Is anybody else celebrating a birthday this time of year?

A YEAR IN REVIEW

By Paula Matter



The good thing about this time of year is I’m still not a year older. I used to hate having a birthday in late December. Not so much anymore. Don’t get me wrong--I’m grateful for every birthday since the alternative sucks. It’s just kind of cool to be the last of my friends to get older each year.

My blog mates* and our regular readers (thank you!) know I’m the youngest of three girls. Being the baby gives me the leeway to be a brat. That’s a secret among us which I’m now sharing. You’re welcome.

Several years ago, my sisters and I stopped exchanging birthday gifts. We faithfully sent each other cards instead. (Here’s where being the bratty baby comes in.) Growing up, because my birthday falls two days after Christmas, I always received an “extra” gift on Christmas morning. (If either of my sisters were writing this, they’d say that my birthday was always celebrated on the actual day, but because I’m such a brat I don’t remember it that way. Funny how our memories differ sometimes.)

I digress.

Up until six or seven years ago, my sisters sent me an extra Christmas gift for me to open on my birthday. Seems they had forgotten we stopped buying birthday presents for each other. Did I remind them? Hell, no. I got away with that for years.

So, along with a New Year coming up, so is my birthday. A day to reflect over the last year. What goals/resolutions have I met? Which have fallen by the wayside, and will I attempt to reach them next year? Only one of you knows that I have indeed met a huge goal I’d set last year. I dunno what the outcome will be (I’m not expecting much), but I finally achieved this one particular goal.

Coinciding with my yearly reflecting, good ole Facebook has a new gadget and I played with it last week. A year of status updates. What fun it was to look at them. I was able to see that I had met some of my less lofty (but still important to me) goals. I saw that some things about myself never change.

How about you? Do you look back at the end of the year? Do you set goals for yourself? Have you met your goals/resolutions? Care to share what they are for next year? What will you do to meet these goals?
 
*Why isn't this one word? We have classmates, roommates, so why not blogmates? Ha! Take that, spellchecker. Yeah, I'm still a brat.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Big 4-5

by Lisa Curry

Yesterday, October 9, was my 45th birthday.

I didn’t like turning 40. I didn’t like turning 44, either. In fact, I believe that last year at this time, I wrote what I titled, “Bad Birthday Blog.”

But to my surprise, I’ve found that I like being 45. I like it very much, for reasons I can’t quite explain.

Being overloaded with projects to the point that I’ve had to work the past two weekends, I couldn’t take the day off work. And because my sons had midget football practice and a school open house in the evening, I couldn’t do anything after work to celebrate. My husband is making a cash contribution to my new-washer-and-dryer fund for my birthday, so I didn’t have a gift to open, either.

Despite being just another day in that sense, my birthday had its share of special moments. My co-workers surprised me with two cakes and a peach pie for a birthday dessert after lunch. I had a piece of all three. My husband gave me a birthday card that made me laugh. And my firstborn made me a card with the number “45” handwritten all over the front of it in multi-colored magic marker, because the Hallmark store didn’t offer a single card especially for someone who’s 45 – a fact which seemed to surprise him.

All day long, I kept thinking about being 45 and smiling. It seemed like a milestone, like a significant birthday. Like I’d achieved a whole new level of grownupness. Although I must confess, when I said that to one of the co-workers who bought me a cake, he replied, “Lisa, let us not confuse age with maturity,” which made me laugh. Then he added, “And by the way, I don’t think ‘grownupness’ is a real word.”

Well, of course it’s not, but that’s how I feel. I’ve reached an age at which I think maybe, finally, I know who I am and what I want. And what I want is what I have – a good job doing work I love with people I truly enjoy, a terrific husband who makes me laugh every day, and two kids who are smart, good-looking, athletic, and haven’t quite yet reached the stage of odious adolescence. What more could I ask for?

I’d venture to say that 45 is my favorite age so far.

What’s yours, and why?

A Cool Birthday

by Annette Dashofy

Tomorrow is my birthday. Yeah, yeah. Big whoop-tee-doo. How old will I be? Let’s just say I’ll be as close to 50 as possible without BEING 50. In other words, I’ll be 49.

What a blah kind of birthday. Now, NEXT year, look out. Those round numbers somehow elicit a huge demand for celebration. And heckling. But the years BEFORE the round numbers get no respect. And very little attention. Frankly, I’m fine with that. In fact, I’m considering cancelling all future birthdays. Really. Who needs ‘em.

In case you’re wondering what I’m getting for my birthday (yeah, I know you really don’t care), I’m getting a heat pump installed in my house.

Okay, we were getting it anyway. Hubby was rather grateful that I let him off the proverbial hook, since we will have no money once we pay for the thing. The way I figure it, a woman pushing fifty has certain needs in life. Central air conditioning is one of them.

The two dinky little window units we’ve been using are fine. As long as you happen to be in either the bedroom or my office, which is where they are located. But the rest of the house resembles a sauna. Plus, I can’t stand the rumble, rattle, and hum of the window unit when I’m trying to sleep. So we shut everything down and throw open the windows before bedtime. Within an hour, the humidity has crept in and I can’t sleep anyway.

I think a heat pump with central air is a terrific birthday present. I don’t need anything else.

Plus we went away for a few days over the Fourth of July and had to leave my cat at home. I closed all the blinds and curtains and prayed for cloudy weather. Goodness knows we’ve had enough of it lately. But of course, the sun came out, the inside temperature soared above 80, and poor Skye was one cranky little cat by the time we walked through the door. As soon as I fired up the a/c units and the house cooled off, she bounced back to her usual happy, if psycho, self.

The next time we take off for a few days, we’ll have our new air conditioning up and running, so the furry one will be cool and comfy, too.

Of course, Hubby isn’t even slightly concerned with the cat’s comfort. He’s concerned with his bank account. We currently have a twenty-five year old oil furnace. The first year we had it, we paid 67 cents per gallon for oil in the summertime. Because we only had one tank, we ran out mid winter and had to pay close to 90 cents per gallon to refill it. By the next year, we had a second tank so that wouldn’t happen again. We would wait until June or July when the oil prices dropped to their lowest to order our winter supply. For years, we never paid over a dollar a gallon. Last year, we paid over two dollars a gallon. This year, it’s well over four. And climbing. So the decision to replace the aging oil furnace NOW and use our winter fuel stash as part of the down payment seems like a no-brainer. If anything, we should have done it sooner. Like for my forty-seventh birthday.

So bring on 49! Bring on 50! Hit me with your best hot flash. I will be languishing in my air conditioned glory. Happy Birthday to me!

Bad Birthday Blog

By Lisa Curry

This past Tuesday, October 9, was my birthday. My 44th birthday, to be precise.

The day was not helped in any way by my suffering both the flu and PMS.

Those double fours sound so squarely middle-aged.

And there’s this thing I have with my mother. If she were alive, she’d be 66. But instead, she was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver 17 years ago. So she’s forever 49.

I’m only 5 years younger than my mother.

I’m as close in age to my mother as I am to my only sibling, my 5-years-younger sister.

Now that’s freaky. No wonder I wanted to stick my head in the oven. (Alas, it’s electric.)

On the other hand, the flu passes, PMS passes, and you can’t freak out about your age forever.

For starters, I’m not the queen of healthy living, and I’ve seen firsthand what two of my grandparents were like in their late 80s. Therefore, I neither expect nor aspire to reach 88, so at 44, I’m probably already well past middle age. That takes some of the pressure off.

Second, 44 probably isn’t as bad as 45, 46, 47 or 48 will be. And I’m sure it isn’t as bad as my 49th birthday will be, because I fully expect my head to implode or something equally dire to occur that day. And that makes me normal, according to Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters, who says that deep down inside, a lot of women find it impossible to imagine living longer than their mothers did. And normal’s good.

On that note, I’m feeling positively perky. I’ve got 5 good years left in me. Might as well enjoy them and not waste them moping!

How about you? Ever had a really bad birthday?