Incremental years are just not adequate enough to express the fun time spent here on planet earth.  We ought to calculate birthdays in minutes because it provides a heartier perpspective, something with a little more gravitas.  Imagine the birthday candles!

Find your minutes, hours, weeks age here.  Some of you are turning the clock on 23 Million minutes this June.   Since I have a million more minutes on some of you, that ought to count for something.  Like a bigger slice of cake perhaps.   In any case, happy birthday to all of us.  

To commemorate the roll over from thirty-nine to forty, we drove all day and night to visit the Grand Canyon so I could meet something far older, far more worn than me and see how it fared. 

And there is was, calm, majestic and serene and well, worn in that beautific way.   And at sunset it was as if the Canyon glow was a personal birthday message telling me that I was pretty much a gnat, an insignificant click in time and to get over my little self.   I was humbled, awed, and enjoyed more cake than one person should consume.

The good news, though I was not aware of it yet, was that at 40, my hair was still brunette all on its own.

At 50 years, 26 million-ish minutes, when my hair was no longer brunette on its own, I had a small birthday gathering with friends and toasted my good fortune which included still breathing.   AARP invaded my mailbox 5 minutes after I turned 50.   You can read about that here.  All of these people in this photo are still my friends with the exception of 2.  Currently they are handy spare back-up friends.

 At 52 I has surpassed the life span of my matriarchal ancestors and celebrated in Paris merely by chance.  While my hair was way more silver than brunette at that point, no one in Paris gave it a second thought.  So neither did I.

I turn 54 this week- not on purpose.  It just happens that the clock keeps on ticking away those minutes whether I want it to or not.  But in the scheme of things, being around to hear the ticking is a good thing.  Even 24 million of them.

 I plan to be sitting under the 72 year old, almost 38 million minutes old Golden Gate Bridge, somewhere in the Fort Baker sandbox, not in the water, frolicking with Lulu and Phoebe, off leash.   I will celebrate by gazing up into the aged bridge and hoping not only that I am that structurally sound but that I look that good in 18 more years.

And yes, of course, I will share some cake.  Happy Birthday and Joyeux Anniversaire my fellow OS June birthday friends.