On Like Donkey Kong

nothing makes me happier than a little June in my life. it also makes me busy and broke, but happiness has its price. the reason June is the best month of the year is because i was born in June, on June 26 to be exact, so you have some time left to get me a birthday gift. please make it BIG. ribbons are also welcome. and if you’re my mom, i would love a spa day with an hour-long massage by a cabana boy who will pepper me with compliments about my youthful appearance.

i’ll be a whooping 33 years old this year, which brings me one year closer to the time when i should be lying about my age. i’m guessing that happens around 39 or 40. but for now i’m ok being 33 and being honest about it. i’m ok with the fine lines i see developing around my eyes, the laugh lines deepening with each year of good times spent with family and friends.

the thing i can do without are the relentless gray hairs that have stepped up their assault in recent years. all the women in my family have this problem of premature graying, so i’ve been plucking these wiry, witch-like gray hairs from my scalp since i was 19. when i complain to my mom about this, she says, “just wait till you have to pluck them from your pubes.” then i stop complaining.

June is also the month of my sister’s birth, as well as the births of a few close friends, three of whom were born on June 5 (happy birthday Ann, Dave and Sharon!), plus father’s day and my anniversary with Mo (4 years!). Juice’s birthday is also somewhere in June — somewhere mysterious and forever unknown as LA pound puppies don’t come with birth certificates, but she’s a June baby all the same. she’ll be 7.

it alarms me that this year is already half over and (of course) i haven’t put a dent in all the things i had planned to beat into completion with a baseball bat when the year began. and of course i say this every year, in June and again in December when i run through the list of things i’ve yet to complete, a list immortalized in an entry i wrote three years ago when i turned 30, replicated below with a progress report in italics:

• have a kid! maybe even two (three tops). maybe this won’t play out completely perfectly, maybe you’ll need to visit the sperm bank when you hit your “scary age” but have a kid at some point, even if it’s just one, because from the outside, parenthood looks interesting, exhausting, otherworldly and definitely worth knowing.
  thankfully i’ve found a wonderful candidate for this, so no sperm bank visit will be necessary! we still need a couple more years to make this happen and we plan to practice plenty until it does.


• don’t get married just to have a kid or just to be married. honor the promise you made to yourself regarding marriage — that you’ll do it only if it feels absolutely right in your bones, your blood and your brain. and even then reconsider.
  again, i have my candidate and it’ll happen with a bit more time. quit rushing me!


• write a friggin book! or two or ten. find the time and discipline and just write already. potential without action is worthless. publish or perish, bitch.
  doesn’t the blog count? i need a book deal to write a book. any publishers out there?


• quit being negative. we’ve gone over this before.
  shut up and quit being so critical.


• recognize that everything that’s happened up to this moment, whether good or bad, is not as important as what happens after this moment. remind yourself every day that the past does not have to impact the future.
  i think i got this one down. denial works wonders.


• get better at buying your own bullshit if you expect other people to.
  can i retract this? it doesn’t work for me anymore, because the older i get, the more i get to know the truth about myself, and the more i get comfortable with that truth, the less i feel like masking it with bullshit. updated goal: get better at being true to yourself if you expect others to view you accurately. on second thought, forget the others and just be true to yourself. the rest will come.


• buy some property. G-d ain’t making any more real estate. and then sell the property. paper equity is not as good as money in the bank.
  finally! one i actually accomplished!! CHECK!!!


• dogs. have more.
  yay, another! Pinko makes two dogs in the house!! CHECK!!!


• all that adult shit that your pops has been telling you about for years — saving for retirement, insuring everything, maintaining good credit — subscribe to it. also, eradicate all student debt by 40.
  working on this one, though house = debt. but my bills are paid on time and i always live within my means.


• prepare for deaths in the family. you aren’t the only one who’s aging.
  gulp. everyone’s still healthy and i don’t even want to think about it so quit playing debbie downer. this is a fun post.


• don’t bother with people you don’t care for, tasks you don’t need to do and situations you’d rather not be in. you have the freedom to politely excuse yourself from all of them. up until you have that kid, your greatest obligation is to yourself.
  yes, be more selfish! good advice.


• now go get ’em, tiger.
  okay.