Normally, birthdays really do not bother me all that much. I’ve never subscribed to the whole outdated notion that a woman never tells her age, and will readily supply the exact number whenver I am asked (even if I usually, at this point, have to pause and think “wait, how old am I, again?’). But there is something about approaching 40 that really started to get to me. It’s only a number, I realize, but there’s so much significance attached to milestone ages, that it’s hard even for a confirmed age ignorer like myself to completely pretend that it is just any other birthday and to instead start to feel insecure and grouchy and, well, *old*.

I also rarely do anything for my birthday (beyond the usual gathering of immediate family, or dinner out with Richard) – I think the last time I had an actual birthday *party* was probably back in grade school – but I started to wish maybe just this once I’d taken the time to organize some kind of celebration, and was feeling a little bit grumpy that I didn’t, and really, by the time this week rolled around I would have been just as happy to have the universe magically skip forward to June, and bypass the stupid birthday completely.

With nothing at all planned on the actual day, I figured my birthday would just be a quiet day at home. I’d putter around in the kitchen (have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE our new kitchen? Because I do. SO VERY MUCH), bake myself a cake (it’s not as pathetic as it sounds – I found this recipe for caramel cake with caramelized butter frosting, and I was really looking forward to giving it a try, because seriously, I really enjoy baking and trying new recipes, and also, how can you go wrong with cake, caramel and butter?), do some knitting, and do my best to ignore all the things that I *should* be doing with my free time, like classwork, and writing up patterns, and trying to figure out why the air conditioner mysteriously stopped working, and painting the baseboards downstairs, and on and on and on.

Then mid-week my mom called to say that although my parents and my older sister would busy during the day, they didn’t want to completely ignore my birthday, so how about we come over to their house for cake and ice cream later in the evening. So instead of making myself a birthday cake, when I got up yesterday morning, I instead made us a coffee cake, swirled with chocolate and topped with walnuts and brown sugar crumble, and we ate huge pieces of that with coffee. We’ve been holding off on vacuuming upstairs because there’ve been workmen making messes, cutting holes in walls to move light switches and install new ceiling fans all week, so the house was getting pretty dusty, and it was really starting to annoy me, so Richard told me that as part of my present, he’d clean the house, and I wasn’t allowed to help with that at all. He gave me a lovely pile of presents, and I camped out in the living room with my knitting and my coffee and a few cats for a while, and then he unpacked the rest of the books downstairs so that the library is finally (mostly) complete. I decided I wanted to give the strudel recipe another try, so I chopped up onions and peppers and mushrooms, and rolled out the dough, and this time managed to do it with 90% fewer holes and a whole lot more length and width (alas, I did not take any pictures this time). And then once that was baked and my hands were a little sore from knitting, I camped out on my computer for a few rounds of Plants vs Zombies (I may be a wee bit obsessed with that game currently. Just a bit), and was just starting to think that we ought to eat dinner and then I should go downstairs and change (black t-shirt + white cat = major shedding), when I heard bagpipes outside the front door – my dad, playing Happy Birthday, and thus my marvelous husband managed to pull off a surprise party for me, without me ever once having a clue what he was up to.

My parents arrived bearing a huge chocolate cake decorated with cat paw prints and balls of yarn (in icing, of course), and a selection of ice cream, and they were followed shortly thereafter by my knitting mom, and my older sister and her family, and then over the next half hour, more and more friends started pouring in. We got to show off our kitchen to a few people who hadn’t yet seen it, and our lovely freshly-painted and organized library downstairs, and our slightly messy, but extremely lush vegetable garden in the back yard. There was lots of yummy food, and several adorable babies to entertain the guests, and even though most of the cats took one look at the crowd and hightailed it downstairs to hide, a few remained upstairs for purely decorative purposes. It was chaotic and noisy and so much fun, and just the sort of thing I would have planned if I’d done it myself. And all in all, what with the chances to putter in the kitchen, and play with the cats, and check off a few more projects on the House To Do list, and a lovely, crazy surprise party to round out the day, it was the perfect way to mark a big milestone birthday.

So yeah. Now I’m 40. And you know what? I’m perfectly okay with that.