39

18 years ago, on the night before my 21st birthday, I had a dream in which some unidentified person asked me to define God. My answer was this: “God is like playing hide and seek with your sister. You walk into the room and it feels like she’s everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.”

Now, before anyone goes thinking I am anything other than terminally agnostic, I should counter-balance this dream with the fact that my daughter asked me just yesterday what a Baby Teaser was. Turns out her friend has a favourite song about “some Baby Teasers in a manger”. Need I say more?

Anyway, I found myself recalling that dream the other day  - and not because my birthday was approaching and I was taking stock of the scant moments of profundity I’ve had in my 39 years on this planet (“There is such a thing as too much tequila” possibly being the only other one).

I thought of the dream because Mr Justice decided at the last minute that he wanted to take his remote-controlled Batman car in for Show And Tell. After a widespread search of the House That Ate Paris, we managed to only find the car but not the remote control. And in my mind, I had one of those cinematic montage’o'memories sequences as I remembered all the places I had ever seen the damn thing: languishing in a corner, at the bottom of the Barbie box, underneath Mr Justice’s bed, in “time out” on a high shelf… As Mr Justice himself exclaimed: “I’ve seen it at least four times in the last year!”

So yes, I found myself thinking that the remote control felt like it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Just like God. Now I don’t know about God (terminally agnostic, remember?), but in the end, the remote control was mostly nowhere and Mr Justice was forced to change his S&T plans. 

Of course I managed to wander around the house the rest of the day, still searching, searching, searching … in much the way someone might wander vaguely about looking for scissors, making that scissors action with their fingers. I began cursing that the stupid remote control wasn’t attached to the stupid car, except then it wouldn’t have been a “remote” control and therefore be even stupider. And to add insult to injury, in my travels around the house, I kept finding all the other stupid items I’d recently searched high and low for without success – except now, when I no longer needed them and just the very sight of them hurt me. 

Anyway, all that aside, today is my 39th birthday. Unlike most people, I tend to make New Year’s Eve-type resolutions on my birthday. Mostly because my birthday is exactly seven weeks before Christmas and  I am incredibly unlikely to do anything rash or stupid like try to give up alcohol or butter. 

So here are my Birthday Resolutions for the year leading up to the Big Four-Oh:

• try not to use the words “ARSE”, “BUM” or “PISS” around my children or the Principal of my child’s school;
• stop wearing my maternity trousers;
• get a hair cut (since it’s been about 15 months since my last one, that’s harder than it sounds);
• keep this blog going without upsetting anyone I love or inviting legal action;
• find the perfect pair of red shoes to turn 40 in;
• stop calling everything STUPID except when really absolutely necessary;
• find the stupid remote control for the stupid Batman car. 

Happy Birthday, Me.