Now that I am an oldie oldster forty year old I would so love love love to wear this fabulous necklace with pride and let my forty flag fly (first seen on Oh Joy).

By the Etsy seller TheBeSide.

As part of Birthday Month a girlfriend and I went to the fabulously atmospheric Southern Accent on Markham Street for a birthday dinner. I love the Cajun voodoo vibe and am a huge fan of their bourbon sours and bourbon bread pudding.

I was excited to treat myself to a fifteen minute psychic reading offered at the restaurant. I hoped to gain a little insight into my new year and decade ahead and perhaps have a supernatural epiphany of sorts. I wasn’t expecting a life altering experience, it’s a fifteen minute reading at a restaurant after all. Basically, it is the equivalent of a palm reading from a scarf wearing fortune teller at a makeshift card table at a carnival. I didn’t think it would magically set me on a new path but I expected a fun little psychic nugget to entertain my boozy bourbon evening.

The alarm bells should have sounded when I saw the psychic sitting on the patio wearing a tablecloth around her shoulders. After setting her timer for fifteen minutes she explained that she was wearing the tablecloth as protection from minuscule green bugs that were falling from the trees onto her shoulder. She told me about a David Suzuki lecture she had attended about the disappearance of bees but assured me that “the higher creator made all of this, the higher creator will fix it, so it is all good and we don’t have to worry, blessings all around.”

She looked at a row of cards and promptly declared that this was the year I would meet my soul mate, marry and have two kids. At this time I probably should have packed it in and gone back to the drink waiting for me at my table. I explained that I have already married my soul mate and the only additions to the family will be a dog.

“I see,” she nodded knowingly and reshuffled her cards.

After a moment she announced,”You will be getting a divorce.”

I tried not to roll my eyes.

“You will want to get back to your roots and return to the ocean, does that make sense to you?

It didn’t. Unless the hydro fields and strip malls of my suburban Scarborough childhood were concealing a beach unbeknown to me.

“Hmmm, well, I see you near water. You will be spending time near the lake at your cottage meditating.”

I don’t have a cottage, nor do any of my friends, nor does anyone I know for that matter so my only hope for meditating by the lake at a cottage was now pinned on my new soul mate/husband who would be impregnating me with twins this year.

She asked if I was a teacher, if I wanted to reconnect with someone from my past, if I was dealing with legal issues.

No, no and no.

She announced that I had important things to do and people to meet and, “Life is going to change and all that kind of stuff.”

All that kind of stuff? Now I really felt cheated. Surely she could try an little harder than a breezy all that kind of stuff?!

Luckily the timer buzzed and my psychic enlightenment was complete. We sat in awkward silence for a few moments and I briefly worried that if she had any small smattering of psychic ability she would realize that I thought she was the laziest charlatan ever. She adjusted her tablecloth around her shoulders, spread her arms expansively and declared “blessings all around!”

I returned to my dinner companion and bourbon sour, thirty dollars poorer, unenlightened and uninspired. It looks as though I will have to create my own destiny this decade.

I have a clothing problem. I cannot close my drawers and my closet is bursting with items. I am not a fashionista. I am a hoarder, plain and simple. What’s even more troublesome is that I love other people’s cast-offs. Getting rid of that misshapen t-shirt with the paint stains? I’ll take it. Have a pair of ill-fitting pants with worn out butt cheeks? Perfect.

I freaked out when I was making the switch from my winter clothes to my summer clothes. How many white t-shirts does one woman need? Many, apparently. I dutifully unpacked the cropped pants that make my legs look stumpy, the dress that squishes my armpit fat, and the skirt that blows open and exposes me when I walk. I then packed away the winter sweaters that are itchy and give me a barrel chest, the tweed pants that ride up my bum, and the black shapeless dress I never wear but keep because it may come in handy one day.

I was so shamed by my piles of under-worn clothes that I vowed to turn over a new leaf and never buy another stitch of clothing again, or at least for a season. I was so disturbed that I almost told The Sweetie not to get me any birthday treats from Smoking Lily while he is in Victoria this week. I had dropped numerous hints that Smoking Lily would be a good destination for a husband of a birthday month celebrant. Surrounded by piles of clothing, I called him and announced that I didn’t need anything from Smoking Lily and that I had become a new streamlined clothing minimalist.

I am weak though. I peeked at the Smoking Lily website and saw this adorable dress and now I am salivating and making sick deals with myself. If I promise to get rid of the shapeless black dress maybe I could replace it with a new adorable birthday dress. After all, if it’s a gift I would not be complicit in ruining my new declaration of minimalism.

I would promise to treasure and wear this precious dress for always.

I am back from my super fantastic vacation. I experienced a few tsks and raised eyebrows when I declared that The Sweetie and I were going on a two week beach vacation. I also heard some thinly veiled catty remarks of how boring it would be to be stuck on a beach for two weeks. Pah. The naysayers can bite my guacamole filled ass. It was pure sunny glorious bliss.

It was dreamy and delightful and completely turned off and tuned out. Endless sunny days filled with rickety buses to dusty towns and cheap beer, buffet madness with grilled fish caught by the local fishermen, sipping drinks from coconuts, and squishing my toes in the sand. I loved having beach walks and feeling the surf pulling at my ankles, my belly distended from shrimp burritos and nachos, my 10 am margarita buzz leaving me gleefully loopy.

I felt utterly at peace and neuroses-free, grinning maniacally to myself in full sun-kissed glory.

Soon I will be off on a beach vacation. Go on, you can hate me. I know I’d hate me. I understand.

The Sweetie and I found a super duper crazy deal to Mexico at an all-inclusive resort for two weeks and being someone who suffers from SAD, and this being an extra long and brutal winter I am flitting off guilt free and in denial about my maxed out credit card. I’ll be blissfully happy as I eat mangoes and play our favourite game of guessing which tourist will be eaten by a shark. I am always amazed by people who swim out beyond jumping distance of the shore, at sunset, wearing metallic bathing suits and near diving birds. Obviously they haven’t studied the shark attack website, otherwise they’d know that these are all no-no’s. I love being in the ocean but I am very conscious of the fact that it is not my natural environment and is teeming with creatures waiting to eat me. I make sure there is a protective phalanx of other swimmers further out than I am, and I’m always prepared to leap onto the sand at the first sign of an underwater struggle.

My poor Sweetie used to play in the ocean unencumbered by neurotic fears of imminent shark attacks. He fearlessly snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef, which is nothing but a hotbed of ravenous great white sharks, and just felt awe. He also used to enjoy camping. This was before we went camping together and I was obsessed with being eaten by a bear. I  have managed to systematically ruin activities that he used to enjoy, replacing them with hopefully equally entertaining games of  “guess the shark victim”, “who can eat the most at the buffet” contests, and intense poker matches.

Despite my somewhat cynical feelings towards Valentine’s Day, I  am still  being sucked into a Valentine love bubble.

My heart started pounding and my breath quickened when I saw this sweet little number, created by the lovely Amy at Smitten Kitten.

I felt the love, and knew we had to be together.

Happy Valentine’s Day to me.