Happy birthday me. 49. Who would have thought. Probably not you dear reader. I write with such a youthful enthusiasm, some may call it immaturity, that I'm sure you thought I'd be years younger. Somedays I feel it. More often than not I don't. I'm happy with my almost half century on this planet. 49 is where I am, and who I am, and I don't mind one bit. Really.
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Fifty, however, has me thinking. This time next year I'll be a week short of the big 5-ohh. Ohh.
Should I be worried, should I be fearful, excited, nervous, optimistic? All of those things. Who knows what the year has in store, all I do know is that this time next year I'll almost be 50. Can't stop that.
But I feel a birthday with a zero deserves something of a celebration, deserves to be noted, and so I've decided to devote the year to being a little bit selfish and spend some time doing things for me. Five things. My five-ohh things.
Cook more.
And not just to get tea on the table. By 50 I should know how to make bread from scratch. How to know the difference between spring onions and shallots. How to use a knife properly. I have too many cookbooks. There are recipes just waiting to be made. I want to eat more seafood. More salads than don't include iceberg lettuce. I want to expand the palates of the kids and surprise them occasionally when they like something they've never tried before. I want to shop better and stop wasting food. Sure, there will be nights where we'll eat sausages and mash for tea. Because there are nights where you just need something comforting in your tummy. But there'll be nights too where we'll travel the world, trying new things. If we don't like it, so what. We'll live to eat, and cook, another night.
Read more.
Doing the books job here has made me realise how much I miss books. I've got a list of books I want to read, recommendations from publishers, friends and ones I want to catch up with again. We've got a trashy book train happening here at work, Gone Girl-ish thrillers that get passed on from colleague to colleague. I want the kids to read a few classics. I want one of them, in particular, just to read. I'm going to wean myself off late night internet. Facebook be gone. Face in a book instead. I want to lose myself in words and find new friends. I cried when I finished reading Laline Paull's The Bees because I thought I would never read as good a book again. I'm sure they are out there. Hell, I might even join a bookclub. A proper one where it is about the book and not about the wine or the catch up. Hell I might even write one.
See more.
Even if I just see more of my own neighbourhood. It's too easy to blame being busy for not doing stuff. Remember when you could just go? Grab your purse and your car keys and just go? Now there's schedules and timetables and chores. All those things can wait. The kids and I had a great road trip this year. It was only to Dubbo, via Wellington Caves and home via Mudgee, the Blue Mountains and Jenolan Caves. It's been ages since I've said let's see where this road takes us. We got lost, we saw some great things, we sang and talked and enjoyed each other's company. That's the best part of it.
Run more.
Actually, just start running again. I never thought this is something I would say but I miss it. I miss my angry running where, if I were in a mood, the covering of kilometres, with too loud music, would get me out of that mood. Endorphins and all that. Time for me. I walked to my son's cricket the other day. He was playing on the far side of town, well Yarralumla and I thought it's just across the lake. Appears I went the long way, around Scrivener Dam, not across Commonwealth Avenue Bridge. I love it. Only 14km, and, at about the 11km mark, when I realised I might not get to see any of the actual cricket, I started to run. There was a good song on my iPhone, I was headed downhill, and it was great, knowing that I still had something in the legs. A very weird thought crossed my mind – maybe I could become one of those crazy middle-aged women who take up ultra running. It's a growing sport you know. People who run for the experience, not for the time, or the statistics, just because. What a great way to see the world. Let's not get too carried away. One step at a time, literally.
Be more.
I know I have more in me. The best is yet to come. I'm on my way down the other side of the mountain and I'm going to strap myself in and enjoy the ride.
