2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2

I am 32 today! Such a nice factorable number. I don't have any super fun plans, unfortunately, not even the laid-back plans I had last year when my parents watched the girls and I went out by myself for a bit. This is largely my own fault because I did not plan ahead of time to get a babysitter or something (and my parents moved out of town, for anybody who hasn't been paying minute attention to the details of my life). And it is also partly the fault of our life circumstances right now, with all the insanity of our imminent move and the travel we've been doing and how behind on stuff at work Rob has gotten because of aforementioned move and travel. This is a definite downside to having a summer birthday that falls right in the middle of moving season (well, moving season for medical families, anyhow, with the medical academic year that starts in July every year); such a birthday often gets lost in the shuffle of other, more pressing concerns. I think I barely noticed turning 30 the year we moved from Connecticut to Texas, or turning 27 when we moved the opposite direction 3 years before. Anyway, I am a grown-up now and if I want to do something special on my birthday, despite the life circumstances around me, I should probably buckle down and make it happen. I shall remember this for next year.

Rob has promised to make it home in time for dinner tonight, though, so we will have a nice evening together. I plan to grill pizzas, unless it rains, which it is looking like it might do, and we have a big watermelon I plant to cut up and there is a bottle of bubbly wine in the refrigerator. This afternoon I'm going to take the girls to get a birthday cake for me from a cheesecake place that is on of our regular routes around town and has tempted me, oh, since we first moved to this side of town. Mmmmmmm, birthday cheesecake...

As to the tumultuous life circumstances that are interfering with a full celebration of my birthday, I feel overwhelmed and a bit like we're staggering blindly around trying to keep on top of things. I think we do have a house to move to now, which is a very nice development. We originally were thinking apartments, because we thought it would be easier to get a short-term lease, but it didn't work out that way because of pet policies and whatnot. I feel very happy about the house we did end up getting, after the owner hemmed and hawed for a while about whether he was willing to do a shorter lease with us. It is a 50s era house that's been taken care of very, very well and is in nice shape. It has its original metal cabinets in the kitchen and original pink and turquoise tile in the bathroom, so I shall feel like a bona fide 50s housewife or something. After living there for a while baking and vacuuming while wearing pearls, I shall read The Feminine Mystique and then throw my bras and girdles in a trashcan. Wait, I don't own a girdle. Anyway, the house is big enough that we won't have to put any of our stuff in storage but can just move everything there, and then from there, hopefully, to a house of our own in not too many months. We are signing a 7-month lease, so we will see where December finds us living!

Oh, and have I yet exclaimed over the wonder that is a paid-for move? I am so, so, deeply, wonderfully happy about this. Rob's new employer is paying for our move, up to an amount that is A LOT, so we are having movers both pack us up and do the loading and moving and EVERYTHING. This will be the first time we've ever done this and I am so excited about it.