First, some news: my story “The Wolf I Want” will appear in the January issue of Cabinet des Fées. I’m super proud of that story.

So. Yesterday was my birthday, and it is weird to now call myself 40. I don’t really feel that grown up. And, you know, I still get carded sometimes when I buy wine at the grocery store.

It was a pretty good day, all told, but very very hard to know that Dad was not going to call me up and say, “Happy birthday, honey bunny.” It does make one sad, and with Christmas coming hard on the heels of it, I can’t muster up a shred of enthusiasm.  But Dingo and the Wicked Stepchildren are joining me in a trip east and north to meet my mother and my sister on a mountain for some snow. That should be good. With all the trips back and forth and huddling under covers, I haven’t seen the Wickeds much this year, and I miss them.

A story:

When I was 15, I decided that I wanted knee-high boots. (And I have never stopped.) We were all Christmas shopping, when Dad said he had found some in the weird “tack shop” store in the mall. I didn’t have enough money to pay for them, but the salesperson said I could put them on layaway, and that day there were having a special – I could put them on layaway for $1, then just make payments.

For the next several weeks, every time I went to mall, I tried to make a payment on those boots, but there would be some kind of crisis, or we’d forget, or any one of a dozen excuses. I got so furious a couple of times that I was probably a giant pill about it.

Then, on my 16th birthday, I got those boots, with $1 stuffed into one.

Nope, hadn’t seen it coming at all.