Ketchup on Pancakes

Or Still Middle-aged (technically)

Tomorrow is my birthday. Yippee! Another year, speeding around the sun. So this was the year I found myself asking if I am still technically middle aged. I have decided yes. Until I qualify for ALL the senior discounts, I am still middle aged. In four years, when I qualify for the Lifetime National Parks pass, I will celebrate graduating to senior. For anyone who doesn't know, once you hit 62, you can pay $80 and get into National Parks for the rest of your life for free. That includes all 63 National Parks, plus all National Monuments, National Historic Sites, and recreation areas. Not only do you get in, but anyone in the car does as well. And federal campsites are 50% off.

The list goes on, but you get the picture — it is a reason to celebrate being 62.

In the meantime, I will continue to celebrate falling into the top of the middle age category. I want to sit here and write something profound, but I am currently preoccupied with having to go to the post office. Someone in the house has lost the key to the mailbox. I keep thinking it was me because I am far less responsible than John. However, I am so irresponsible that I never check the mail. The embarrassing part is that we are renting, so after a week and a half of looking, I finally had to let the landlord know we can't find the key. They don't have a key either. Our carelessness means they have to contact a locksmith for a new lock. I could feel the frustration emanating from the email. We seemed like good renters — I mean, we are almost Seniors. Aka lame. Aka good renters. We have heard a rumor that we can go to the post office to take care of this instead of further irritating our landlord.

You're never too old to do something stupid that has to be fixed.

There is my entry into profound for the day.

I am also preoccupied with the fact that we have a 16-hour drive ahead of us tomorrow and I haven't packed. I have also not picked out where my birthday dinner is going to be tonight. I think anything that doesn't involve me having to cook will be spectacular. Part of my problem is that I had 400 potato pancakes this morning. Maybe not quite that many, but my stomach feels like I did. I had a ton of leftover mashed potatoes from dinner last night — it was a present to myself. I don't make them often because they are kind of a pain in the ass. I must do something wrong because they stick to the spatula like mad when I try to flip them, and I end up eating the bits that stick. Likely a bad idea, because that involves raw egg. If I want to make it to my Lifetime National Parks pass, I need to use better judgment. I did throw out the sour cream — it had a bit of mold and was about a month out of date. I really considered just scraping it off because I love sour cream on my potato pancakes. What I did have? Ketchup. What I discovered? I have been missing out. Why had I never thought of this? Ketchup on potato pancakes is a bit of yum.

Another bit of birthday wisdom: You are never too old to discover something undiscovered.

This year I discovered that I like hockey, love Columbine, that chips don't go stale if there is no humidity, that I can be right and not share it, that I have a vagus nerve and it loves a good sound bath, that I should probably deal with whatever is going on with my shoulder, and that playing in pudding is great fun — though smelling like pudding is gross. It is also perfectly normal to be simultaneously young and decrepit. I love that young me tells decrepit me to stop being a curmudgeon. I love that old me tells irresponsible young me to get my shit together. While perhaps not balance, I am getting the yin and yang existing in my very existence. Being angry takes a lot of energy, so I need to be selective about what is worth spiking my blood pressure over. By the same token, what I choose to love is limitless.

Spiking happy endorphins isn't selfish — it is key to reaching my Senior discount goals.