Forever young

This year I managed to spin out my birthday into a three-day celebration of m-e. I had my actual birthday off work, so we went to the SFMoMA to see the Mastisse sculpture exhibit, which was interesting if a little earthbound—he managed to make the most lithe and lovely women bulky and solid as tree trunks. I guess that was his aesthetic because he was one of those geniuses who could do whatever he pleased with his materials and if he chose to create lumpy sculptures that looked like fists then, okay, I’ll pay to look at that. I got the 4th of July off work (Go Team America!) so that turned into a Napa Valley winery picnic day. We sat under oak trees and baked while sipping a lovely white, which immediately gave me a headache, and eating deli salads with bread and cheese. We moved with the sun and marinated in our own juices. It could have been a Matisse painting, that’s how elegantly sloppy it was. Later we went up on our roof and watched the Marina fireworks show. Much of it was obscured by other apartment buildings, so we mostly got flashes of red, white and blue light with the occasional dandelion burst of loveliness. And the final birthday treat was dinner at a fancy pants restaurant a couple blocks down the road where we ate our first expensive, fine cuisine probably since we left NZ. It was nice to blow the budget and blow out the candle in my chocolate cake with ganache.
And so another year passes under the door, never to be seen again. I have been in my 30s for a wee while now, but it still takes me by surprise—not that time is passing but that it has left me virtually unchanged which doesn't seem quite fair. When do I get to be wise and unhurried? If my three-year-old self and my 15-year-old self and my current self sat down together they would laugh their asses off. They would share the same sense of humor, the same taste in clothing and books, the same love of shiny objects, the same passion for Mexican food and the beach and puppies, the same disdain for anything fussy or overblown, and the same self-defeating behavior—quietly watching other people take credit for their efforts, keeping thoughts private which should be shared, and flaring into anger quickly and without warning only to fizzle ineffectually 10 minutes later. The linear progression favored by the wildly, covetously successful hasn’t exactly happened. I mean, there’s a ton of good stuff in my life that I can feel happy about, and I do. At the same time, there is a noticeable lack of drive, career cultivation and other hallmarks of true adulthood. It’s embarrassing. I still like dollhouses, I eat peanut butter out of the jar, and I lavish affection on a pair of hamsters who would happily kill each other. (I met a 10-year-old fellow dwarf hamster caretaker last week who told me he didn’t know any other adults with hammies. This kid ate slabs of quivery raw fish without blinking and still thought I was a bit off.) I am scared of hairdressers. I check out well-dressed women on the bus and try to figure out how they did it. I chew my fingernails then hate myself for it. I actually care what happens to poor, brainwashed Katie Holmes.
I was talking to a friend about this the other week. Blessedly, I am not alone. She was faux despairing because she had just bought a pair of red, diamante-d heels which she wore around the house with trackies because…well, she lives alone and why the heck not? Seems we 70s kids ended up without some essential adult chip in our brains. Is it because we watched Three’s Company and ate too much red-dyed food? Or are we supposed to serve as an antidote to all these whippersnappers pouring out of high schools now with web-based businesses, a dozen cool and useful talents (such as decoupage and jujitsu and chocolate-making), and a gentle disdain for their 30-something aunts and uncles and parents’ friends? I'd like to think there's some useful reason for my bubblegum habit and plastic jewels.

Sunday blahs

Sunday night is always a bit of a downer. I am not loving the job just now, so I have that "going back to boarding school" sick-tummy feeling. This is a horribly familiar sensation that was particularly acute for me from 1988 to 1991, when I was actually attending boarding school, and every holiday ended with a nauseous car/plane trip back to school and a sonic-boom fight with my parents. (Let me digress for a moment and describe my reaction to entering boarding school at 13, painfully shy and woefully unprepared for life with a mob of other adolescents, their hormones, their dangerous beauty routines, and their drugs. First, I stopped eating much, and lost about a quarter of my body weight in the first term. Then, I allowed another boarder, who had an interest in hairdressing but no discernible talent, to cut my nearly waist-length hair into a bob. The ends looked like I'd got stuck in a door and had to hack my way out. When my parents turned up for swimming sports, they didn't recognise me in the crowd.)
I had another terrible round of boarding tum when I was working for a certain start-up newspaper (the biggest professional nightmare of my life, and the only time I have consciously walked away from a bad situation instead of standing and fighting), and now I have a mild case which I am attempting to quell through strength of will and renewed physical fitness. After all, this is my birthday week, and I officially hit my mid-thirties, surely a joke. I own hamsters, speak to strange dogs in the street, and still keep track of Paris Hilton. I am not really a proper adult.
To deal to the tummy, I have sucked back a mug of spicy hot chocolate, a big serving of empty carbs, and am now working my way through a glass of Riesling. I made an inspiring list of places we may visit in the next year--Alaska, Colorado, and Montana figure strongly--and I have plans to retreat to bed early with a new book, an autobiography written by a man who grew up in San Francisco high society. It's all about his evil stepmother who sounds like a fabulous character. Horrible but fabulous.
BTW, speaking of horrible, I saw A Mighty Heart, the film about the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was abducted in Pakistan in 2002 and beheaded. It is based on the novel by his wife, Marianne, and it is really good. I was resistant because it stars Angelina Jolie, who makes me feel like biting kittens. But she manages to avoid the pouty, self-satisfied smirk which has been such a mainstay of her career and does a wonderful job of portraying an admirably strong woman in the worst possible situation.
And so to my book.