It's a testament to Douglas Adams and my own inherent geekdom that I'm feeling this birthday more than I'm feeling my fortieth. It just seems as though 42 is a more momentous number than 40. It might also be the fact that I'm increasingly in need of bifocals these days.
It started gradually, but eventually I noticed that I was having difficulty focusing on small print, and that I'd been having difficulty for some weeks. These days, I'm finding that I have to take my glasses off in order to read the text on my iPhone.
It's frustrating. Still, as things go, I'll take this, and my greying hair, as my preferred signs of aging than, say, aching joints, though I suppose that this sort of thing will come later.
Otherwise, I can't complain. I continue to work at the field I love, and am surrounded by love and good company. My daughters provide me with much joy and frustration and, most of all, wonder. And maybe, fingers crossed, there is a chance that I'll be able to keep doing what I'm doing for years to come. I don't want to jinx things by saying it, but it seems that I've finally figured out what to be now that I've grown up. I can't ask for anything better.
In other news, I've handed in the final edits on three manuscripts -- non-fiction books about ecosystems for children. That brings my total number of titles with my name on the byline to 28. Really, I can't ask for anything better. Fingers crossed, more will come...