{"id":14759,"date":"2014-05-23T10:13:25","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T17:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=14759"},"modified":"2014-05-23T10:37:33","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T17:37:33","slug":"friday-bag-o-unwanted-birthdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=14759","title":{"rendered":"Friday Bag o’ Unwanted Birthdays"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"oldMy 16th birthday was a red letter day. I remember how excited I was to be old enough to drive. Getting my\u00a0first draft card\u00a0when I turned 18 was a big deal too.\u00a0The traditional\u00a0milestone, 21, came and went without any special celebration … Donna and I had been married almost two years by that point, and we already had a child. Alcohol? Donna’s six months older than me;\u00a0she’d\u00a0been buying us\u00a0beer and wine for some time.\u00a0I remember being perversely happy when I turned 30. Never trust anyone over 30, we used to say, so when I hit that mark I finally felt\u00a0like an adult.<\/p>\n

Turning 40, 50, 60, even 65? Just numbers; they didn’t mean all that\u00a0much to me. But this post is about my wife (no, really it’s about me). Donna\u00a0felt bad for a while when she turned 40. Other than that, though, she never went\u00a0into the doldrums over her age. I mean, what the hell are you going to do about it anyway?<\/p>\n

But today Donna turned 68.\u00a0Which means I’ll be turning 68 soon. Which means we’re almost in our 70s. I don’t think Donna’s too concerned about it, but it hit me this morning, when I kissed her and wished her a happy birthday, that we’re officially getting old. I guess I’m feeling today the way Donna says she felt when she turned 40. And I don’t like it.<\/p>\n

I almost shared this\u00a0on Facebook. Instead, I just mentioned that it’s\u00a0Donna’s birthday. I feared typing\u00a0the actual number would creep out\u00a0our friends, most of whom\u00a0are younger than we are.\u00a0A lot of people read what I post on Facebook. Hardly anyone reads this blog, so I’ll share my gloomy thoughts here. Winter is coming.<\/p>\n

The bright side? Apart from the aches and pains that come with getting older, we’re both healthy and happy. Long may it stay that way! What’s that they say about 70 these days? Oh, right … 70 is the new 50!<\/p>\n

Well, I say bullshit. 70 is 70. But we’re not there yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My 16th birthday was a red letter day. I remember how excited I was to be old enough to drive. Getting my\u00a0first draft card\u00a0when I turned 18 was a big deal too.\u00a0The traditional\u00a0milestone, 21, came and went without any special celebration … Donna and I had been married almost two years by that point, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1548,1547],"class_list":["post-14759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-birthdays","tag-donna"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14762,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14759\/revisions\/14762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}