Last Day at 49 Makes 50 Look Good

Monday, November 30, 2009

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Last Day at 49 Makes 50 Look Good

By J’AMY PACHECO

My last day as a 49-year-old didn’t start off well.

My living room is filled with empty boxes, and only a week remains before movers show up expecting to find them filled. My e-mail inbox contains several less-than-pleasant items, including one note from an obvious scammer responding to a furniture ad I placed on Craig’s List, and one from an obnoxious guy in New York berating me for using a “reserve” feature on an online auction I have running.

Moving stinks, and turning 50 the same week you do it stinks bigger. Oh, and did I mention being summoned for jury duty at the same time—not in the community in which I live, but in the distant desert town of Barstow?

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind any of it. Turning 50, for example. Barbie is 50, and she makes it look easy. I went into this 50-thing thinking 50 was the new 30.

When my mother turned 50, her grandkids attended the party. I don’t have grandkids. I have a 13-year-old, and am presently dealing with middle school Algebra, wondering what kind of car my daughter is going to need in just a few years, and plotting how to pay for her to attend the University of Southern California. I’m too stressed out by mom stuff to feel old.

My plan has been to make turning 50 fun, so I arranged a group trip to my happy place: Disneyland. A pal bought me a t-shirt advertising the fact that I’m turning 50, and I plan to wear it, along with a tiara, because when I turn 50, I will have no shame.

Disneyland got into the spirit of things by sending me a musical postcard featuring the barber shop quartet, “Dapper Dans,” singing a peppy birthday song. Fortunately, this card arrived mid-way through my awful day, along with a link to a YouTube video of a cartoon turkey singing, “I Will Survive.” That made me laugh out loud, and almost made me forget about the jerk from New York.

I used to think my 50-some years would be spent doing things like knitting socks. I have a friend who likes knitting socks so much that she joined a “Sock of the Month” club and gets kits for socks every 30 days.

I tried knitting a pair of argyle socks in high school, when I took a decorative arts class. They were difficult enough that I never made it to the foot part. It’s a shame I didn’t keep the tube part, because it would now make a fashionable wrist band for my middle-schooler. Who knew?

I like scrapbooking a lot, and think of it sort of like quilting. I can sit around with friends, cut shapes out of photos and decorative papers, and tape them all together into something that looks very cool.

Unfortunately, scrapbooking is a messy hobby that generates a lot of paper trash and requires space, much like a jigsaw puzzle. Since I rarely have more than a few hours at a time to spend scrapbooking and don’t want to spend my 50-some years picking up paper scraps, my supplies mostly sit gathering dust.

I recently discovered an online game called “Farmville.” I only tried it because someone asked me what I thought was appealing about it. After five minutes of playing, I said, “Nothing.”

But days later, as I was plowing fallow ground, planting sunflowers, collecting milktonium from alien cows and truffles from pigs, rescuing and adopting sad, lost turkeys, cats and turtles and sending daily gifts to my neighbors, I realized I was addicted to Farmville.

It’s a nice addiction for an almost-50-year-old to have. You don’t have to think about it; you can create a very pretty farm with very little work, and when you spend your farm coins buying houses and wishing wells, you can earn them back quickly by harvesting what you plant. No thought, no stress, no yarn to untangle or paper scraps to clean up.

And when I sign on every night, I find a little box filled with thoughtful gifts from my Farmville “neighbors,” who send cheerful things like rabbits, pomegranate trees and American flags.

I don’t think I’d mind spending my 50-some years in Farmville.

My awful end-of-49 day will be over pretty soon. I’ll put on my tiara and head for my happy place with no plan except to stop and sprinkle pixie dust on my family’s brick in the Disney Resort esplanade.

Hopefully I’ll start my 50-some years feeling like a child again. If not, well, those alien cows will soon need milking.