Black Sunday Approacheth

So here's my plan. I'm turning 30 on Sunday (boo) and I'm not altogether pleased about it. I've really enjoyed my twenties. They've been very much of the awesome. From age 22 on, things have just kept getting better and better. And I'm not ruling out the possibility that my thirties will continue on that curve, I just have trepidation.

With 30 comes expectations. My excuse of "well, I'm pretty young for that" is going to start seeming really silly when all the pressure to buy a house and start a family gets started (ha, gets started... Like it hasn't already). Honestly, I'm not sure which terrifies me more; Owning and being responsible for a home or spawning and being responsible for a rug rat. Both leave me paralyzed and fighting the urge to pack up my husband and cat so we can all try outrunning the sun together.

I'm doing really well for 29. I have a good and generally stimulating job at a respected place, I've traveled around the world a touch, I have my youthful looks and I generally come across as pretty confident and with it. I am still kind of young and hip. Once I turn the corner for 30, I'm less impressive. How can I be 30 years old and not own my own home? When I see children I hear no ticking clock, but instead feel a powerful urge to flee (cause like dogs, kids can smell fear). That's not very on top of things for 30.

And I can't even begin to tell you how much it saddens me that very soon I will be one of those people that teenagers mock for not being able to act/dress their age. I try on some of the clothes out there and I look at myself in the mirror and think "who exactly are you kidding?" I have no tolerance for drink and hangovers affect me for days. I already can't handle rock shows and a lot of the new music out there kind of sounds like crap to me. It's terrible.

It's like that situation when I was a kid where when Kingston finally got a MacDonald's play park I was too tall to play in it and could only watch the other kids have fun through the window.

I'm not sure why I allow myself to be so cliché and use these kinds of milestones to apply a self-inflicted mental beat-down, but here we are. I just feel like Sunday morning there will be a mini-van out front waiting to take me to some suburban hell with screaming children jacked up on sugar, a track suit and a house with a room we don't use unless company is coming over. I can hear the banana clip clicking into place on my head like a prison door slamming shut.

Rage. Rage against the dying of the light!

So my plan for this weekend is to have as much fun as I can so that I don't even noticed that I've crossed the threshold into the decade of expectations. On tap there is a dance class with Dawn & Tash, a massage at a fancy-smancy spa, dinner with friends, the promise of pancakes (though I fear M will try to do the unthinkable and put things other than pancake in my pancakes, like fruit...) and maybe some zen time in the park, weather permitting.

I'm going to try to let the weekend pass with some dignity and try to remember that the only expectations that truly matter are my own. And I fully expect to 30 to keep on track with the positive curve of my life.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Move Along" by The All-American Rejects

HRH