Today, I turn 44 years old.

I’ve already got two big birthday presents. The first is that today is the first day after the last day I have to drive my Firstborn to school this year. (Yay! School’s out!) It’s the changing of the season, which always excites me.

The other big birthday present I got is a small wad of cash someone hid in one of my birthday cards. And I’m going to use it to buy a new hard drive for this laptop I’m typing on, because it was running slow, and so I ran a self-test on the drive last night and discovered that it’s on the verge of failing. (Sheesh!)

But I would love more birthday presents!

The biggest gift you could give me, frankly, would be to post a short review of one (or both) of my inspirational ebooks:

Some time ago, I posted some miscellaneous cellphone pictures that had been taken on my old cell phone. Now that I have a new smartphone, with a (slightly) higher resolution camera, it seems lots more pictures get taken. And most of them not by me.

Actually, my Little One, “Abbie the Artist,” has been taking quite a shine to the camera. Her artwork, of course, has greatly improved since I last posted some of it three years ago. She says she thinks in pictures, which sounds like a good name for a photo-memoir… or at least a good name for another blog post. (Stay tuned.)

You can tell she’s artistic, because she dyed the ends of her hair purple. And then started to complain when they faded to pink… -ish.

When I opened my birthday present, aside from the gift itself, out fell two twenties and a ten. And the first thing I thought was, Now I can buy more groceries.

As you know, sometimes the life of a writer sucks. But I do have a summer software contract lined up, which should fund this year’s big book giveaway. As we say: I’m just writing to make money until my software-development career takes off.

Nonetheless, I did manage to stop by the Used Book Superstore yesterday, on a lark. I told myself I’d only check for Holly Lisle titles that I didn’t have. Didn’t find any. (No surprise.) And then I happened through the foreign-language section and the advertising-and-marketing section and the religion section.

I divide my year into two roughly equal seasons: the Holiday Season and the Birthday Season.

The Holiday Season stretches from September through February, during which the days get shorter, the air colder, the leaves more colorful (brown is a color). We start playing Christmas music, unpack the electric menorah, and put up the holiday star. The Holiday Season smells like cold air, dry heat, and pine, and it feels like candy and thanksgiving and NFL football.

The Birthday Season comprises the remaining months of the year. During the Birthday Season, we celebrate all the birthdays of the year (except for my Beloved’s, whose falls during the Holiday Season). It used to begin on the first day of Spring, because the only birthday that fell in early March was my brother’s. But then my other brother married a March girl, and my Beloved and I had a March baby, and so now the first official celebration of the Birthday Season occurs early in March.

Forty years ago, on June 20, 1969, at 2:00 in the afternoon, I first came into this world, probably kicking and screaming, but not going anywhere fast. Since then, I sometimes whether I have gone anywhere ever.

When I was a teenager, one of my older friends turned 40. I could hardly believe it.

“You’re 40?!” I said.

“Yes.” She nodded.

I remember, I thought that was so old. And since then, from time to time, I myself have felt old. But what does that mean, “old”?

“Old” means obsolete, yesterday’s relic.

“Old” means tired and broken down, worn by time.

“Old” means showing the signs of age, wrinkles around the eyes, a paunch on the belly, love handles hanging off the sides.

“Old” means disease, closeness to death, a course of medications to take every day, the fear of time itself, keenly aware that time is escaping.

Why?