After eight years, you get a little blasé about sharing birthday time with your spouse. Our birthdays aren't on the same day, exactly; just four days apart, but in a sequence that amused both our families to no end when they first realized a sequence existed. First Jeff's, then two days later his sister Lori's, and then two days later my birthday rounds out the series.

Sequence. Order. All slapping into place with a neat little snick, the sound of a previously-undiscovered hole in your life filling up.

For him: a book of linux server hacks. For me, a pair of sharpenable sewing scissors. Little things. For better or for worse, we're not the kind of people to make large productions out of birthdays.

But what about the cats, you ask? Yes, in a pathetic and amusing quirk of birth and fate, this house is truly and fully the House of Libra; after we adopted the six-week-old baby furbeasts, we counted back and realized that the cats were born in the gap between Jeff's birthday and mine. Therefore, the brothers Fang will be four this weekend.

I've explained to Fang that they are no longer kittens, and should conduct themselves with the appropriate degree of decorum expected from adult cats. The response? Tenzing immediately went back to sleep. Edmund rolled onto his back in an attempt to convince me to rub his belly.

Luckily, I think this means Fang (either one!) will forgive us for a distinct lack of birthday cakes for the felines.

* * * * *

I always said that turning thirty wouldn't bother me, and I've still got a couple of years left before I'll find out if I was lying through my teeth the entire time, but I know that the prospect of #27 has bothered me more than any other birthday I can remember. I chalk it up to the realization that thirty is closer than twenty.

I think such a thought and then, very quietly in a darker mental corner, a little part of me whispers, "what's the difference between thirty and twenty, anyway? I don't feel different..."

Then I catch myself and realize that yes, I do feel different. I know how to get a marriage license, prepare a tax return, make a counter-offer on a house, and how to make funeral arrangements for a parent. Announcements from friends have shifted from collegiate plans to wedding plans to childbearing plans.

I still don't like it when I'm called "ma'am" in a store by cashiers who obviously aren't old enough to vote, but I think it's kinda funny that I occasionally still get carded when I want to buy a bottle of wine, even though it's rather obvious that twenty-one passed me by a little while back.

I've noticed that two-toed crows take up residence by the corners of my eyes when I smile now. Strangely enough, I like them. They're smile lines. When I rub my eyes after a long day, the skin under my eyes feels equal amounts soft and ... fragile, a word I never would have used in conjunction with me a decade ago.

If there's a difference, I think I'd say it's the difference between the perception of invincibility and a raw understanding of human fragility.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in the House of Libra, Tenzing sleeps on my desk. He has forgiven us for our foray into south Huntsville for a birthday dinner, where we traded weekend plans between bites of each other's food.

Thursday was his day. Monday is mine.

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Tenzing.

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Edmund.