I am 10 months pop-free today

Granted, I’m not over the ambrosial fizziness of bubbly beverages so I’m now living with a three-can-a-day addiction to sparkling water—which is the quién-es-más-macho equivalent of saying I’m living with a three-rainbow-a-day addiction to majestic unicorns—but I’ve successfully broken free from the bonds of pop’s unpronounceable-chemicals elixir soup. And for that I toast myself with my first icy cold can of cherry bubly for the day. ¡Salud! I mean ¡Princess Sparklepony Unicorn!

You know why my day is better than yours?

BECAUSE I HAVE A FRESH BOX OF KLEENEX.

Never mind that it’s off-brand. And that I have a bit of a cold. Those pesky details just ruin my narrative.

Hello, corner of unambiguous gay stereotypes!

Vocabulary quiz

My cute little hexagonal-column knickknack pedestals arrived today and I organized them in artful clusters on my knickknack shelf and then carefully displayed my carefully curated running and theater and Disney knickknacks on them and how many times can I say knickknacks in one sentence?

OR:

My cute little hexagonal-column objets d’art pedestals arrived today and I organized them in artful clusters on my objets d’art shelf and then carefully displayed my carefully curated running and theater and Disney objets d’art on them and how many times can I say objets d’art in one sentence?

I just had 5-Hour Energy for breakfast!

I still haven’t taken the left and right labels off my monitors from when my office moved 18 months ago! Peach-pear La Croix tastes like dust and sadness! Let’s ride bikes! Squirrel!

Welp. I’ve emptied the cat box and taken out the garbage for the last time as a 50-year-old.

So the bloom’s off THAT lily.

Facebook has reminded me that I’ve apparently begun commemorating the night before each birthday with a selfie next to the girls. So here we are again. Looking gay as a purse full of kittens.

What I want for my birthday, in no particular order:
• Less stuff
• Someone objective to help me have less stuff
• A hellfire-damning Mueller report
• A fresh start with a normal kitten
• One single little sentence in which autocorrect hasn’t Needlessly capitalized something
• Less stuff
• A bedroom that I’ve finally painted rich-people blue to cover its current state of urine-sample gold
• Someone to help me find the right shade of rich-people blue
• My old abs
• Lots of cake
• But without compromising my old abs
• A Broadway dance career
• Less stuff
• Abs

Good morning! Does this Vogue-does-Disney-princesses art installation in my bedroom make me look gay?

Or does it just make Belle’s hand look like something you’d find on a Gold Lobster sampler platter?

New haircut. But Belle’s not even giving me a cursory glance to check it out. Rude.

masc4masc

I’m sorry but I went to a wedding reception after tonight’s Elf the Musical performance was all applauded and bowed and as I was getting dressed I realized I had exactly one ironed shirt and it was a difficult shade of blue which is probably why it was my last ironed shirt in the first place but I was out of time so I had to build my entire evening’s reception-appropriate ensemble around my difficult-shade-of-blue-last-ironed-shirt ... AND I KILLED IT. But nobody took my picture so I had to do it myself when I got home and YES I HAVE A PICTURE OF CINDERELLA IN MY BEDROOM SHUT UP.

I got 40 quarters last night to put in my super-masc quarter cup so I have them handy—and pretty—for our the honor-system pop fridge at work.

Also: We use the Chicago Manual of Style at Nordstrom, but I’m a lifelong AP Style guy so I brought in my AP Stylebook to keep it real. CMOS gives me the hives.

The last time I’ll pin a racing bib to my Summer Of Running Away From Being 50 shirt*

The last half marathon I’ll probably ever run, unless I have a tidal change of heart—and knee pain. Hopefully the last time I’ll compulsively eat like I’m running 20+ miles a week.

4:00 am alarm.

4:30 am bus.

5:30 am gun.

13.1 miles.

LET’S. MAKE. THIS. HAPPEN.

*Plastic “Wishing Star” not included in race. It was a little souvenir given to me for no discernible reason at our Cinderella’s Castle dinner. I put it in this traditional pre-race race-outfit photo to add a literal glimmer of Disney sparkle.

#HowToTurn50

So our dinner in the restaurant inside Cinderella’s castle was not only delicious,

but we got seated by the windows JUST AS THE FIREWORKS STARTED OUTSIDE (as illustrated by the subtle but magnificently breathtaking puffs of light behind the windows in photographs 2 and 3):

It really was magical ... except there were four princesses working the room, giving us their individual princess spiels in breathy and/or squeaky voices that we absolutely couldn’t hear, and practically demanding we get up and take pictures with them. It was a royally hostile dinner environment (as illustrated by my forced but princely smiles in photographs 4, 5, 6 and 7):

I love to brag, but we just had a photo op with Cinderella before having dinner in her castle AND SHE PERSONALLY WISHED ME A HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY

And someday when Disney has developed the photos, my prints will come.

Things you might see in a Nordic pride parade

I think that my new drag name shall now and forever be Princess Glitterglobes

And so it’s here: the last night of my 40s

I feel like that ominous, grainy photo of the Titanic sailing away from the White Star Dock in Southampton that’s always accompanied by a caption saying something about it being the last time the ship would ever see land. I was born at 6:30 am, so when I close my eyes tonight it will be the last time I see my bedroom as a 49-year-old because by the time I wake up I’ll be 50.

Turning 50 is bugging me WAY beyond the expected complaints of a certain age milestone making someone feel old. I know I’m not the only person to turn 50 or to feel profoundly older because of it ... and I’m certainly not the first person to complain about it. But 50 brings with it a mathematical sense of mortality that even 49 didn’t: I’m well over halfway done living my life. But I don’t feel like I’ve even STARTED living it by most measures. There’s so much about living that I worry I haven’t even started thinking about, much less doing ... even though I’ve consciously and purposefully been living by the motto “someday just began”—meaning someday is here, so stop putting things off (like tattooing “someday just began” inside your arm where you can easily see it) until some far-off-procrastination someday—for well over two decades.

So in that spirit—and flying in the face of the defeated spirit of the 50-year-old man I desperately don’t want to be—I’ve mapped out a pretty rigorous Summer Of Running Away From Being 50 that includes multiple vacations to favorite destinations including New York City and Washington, D.C., and multiple races including two half marathons, the second of which winds through the parks of my beloved Walt Disney World in November.

So tomorrow’s my new someday. The beginning of my sixth decade. The dawn of my summer-long celebration of that milestone. The onyourmarksgetsetGO! of my sprint toward everything that awaits me between here and 60.

And the moment I wake up tomorrow, it’s only just begun.

#HowToTurn50

Your jealousy is the ugly stepsister

We have a refrigerator at work filled with icy cold pop and an honor-system piggy bank (that’s shaped like an actual pig!) on top for us to pay a quarter every time we take a pop. Naturally, I brought every quarter I could scrounge out of random couch cushions and pay phones to work and stacked them so precariously on my desk that they became a safety hazard and five OSHA violations. So I searched through our storage room at home for a handsome, tasteful demitasse or votive that I could possibly repurpose as a quarter caddy (coffer? cradle? cauldron? kettle? so many alliterative options!) ... and instead I FOUND A WHOLE BAG OF ASSORTED DISNEY PRINCESS PARTY CUPS, the Cinderellaiest of which I—as people do—arranged on my desk with a Diet Coke can and an artful jumble of quarters for this celebratory photo:

Does this wall in my bedroom make me look gay?

Or does it just make Belle’s hand look like something you’d find on a Gold Lobster sampler platter?

When you wish upon a star

Does this Captain America shield hanging on my bedroom door make me seem gay? Be honest.