The Middle Ages

The night before I turned 36, I dreamt that as I was pulling my hair back into a ponytail, I glanced into a mirror and my hair was completely white. You can imagine my surprise, because before I'd pulled it back, it was just the normal brown with a dozen or so strands of white hair thrown in for classiness.

I was kind of shocked, but didn't mind very much. However, when I looked at my face (something I don't do too closely all that often, obviously), it was really wrinkly. Like, old lady after a lifetime of baby-oil tanning wrinkly. I wasn't too excited about that part. In my dream I wondered what my boyfriend would think about this. When I went to find him, though, he was pretty busy singing a Phil Collins song into a hairbrush microphone while gazing into a mirror of his own, so I didn't want to interrupt.

After a few more dreams I woke up and was relieved to find out that I wasn't a wrinkly white-haired hag. Paulie and I did some sleepy morningtime talking, including coverage of the last tendrils of an argument we'd been having over the past week (or according to him, TWO weeks, but, shhhhh). Finally he got up and straddled me over the covers, smooshing my bladder and holding my arms down. He said "okay, it's your birthday, I forgive you."

"What the..."

"Yes, I forgive you for everything you said."

"Oh you do, do you?"

"Yes, and everything you didn't say because I was just imagining it, and everything you haven't even been doing at all because I've just been projecting it on you. I forgive you for all of that. Happy Birrrrrthdaaaaay!"

Then he got up and made me tea. When I finally got out of bed I found that my right ankle wasn't working. I hobbled around saying "what the frack? I wake up on my birthday and my ankle is all wonky?! Not cool!" to which Paulie explained, "you woke up old."

Bah!

Aside from all of that, it was a lovely morning. Well, except for my daughter calling out "bye daddy...Bye bye DADDDDYYY!" after Paul when he left. That's always kind of awkward.

I spent the rest of the morning wondering what Paulie had built me for my birthday. He said it was big and he'd need help carrying it inside. What could it possibly be? I told him if it was too big to carry on his own it was likely too big for my apartment, but he was undeterred. When I got home after work (where I played a lot of solitaire and then drank a bottle of J with and courtesy of my lovely friend Andrea), I walked into my room to put down all of my crap, and I discovered this:

This is not how my bed looked when I left that morning...

He'd built me a freaking headboard out of an old door, and attached a sweet little vintage lamp to the top so we can both read using the same light. Swooooon! Oh, and see that teensie white thing sticking out of it to the right of the pillows? See that? It's kind of hard to see, so look really closely. No? Okay, here's a closeup:

It's a built-in charger. Let me repeat:
BUILT IN. There's one on each side.
What the WHAT?!

I can't believe I'd almost broken up with this guy just a day or two earlier after my moody pre- during- and post-menstrual -slash- Midlife Crisis insanity. Phew! Now that I'm middle aged I need someone to snuggle with under one light while we simultaneously charge our phones. How did he know?! He's incredible. 

Alright. Now I'm fully prepared to embark on this, the Middle of My Ages.