How old are you now?

That's what my cousin T out in Arizona asked when he called me tonight.... "How old are you now?"  I told him that I'm still younger than he is, but neither one of us are as old as our 100-yr-old Aunt Dolly.  And, of course, we should all pray that we get to be as old as Aunt Dolly.

62 years old. Ouch. Big ouch.  How can this possibly be?  But I said that same thing last year, and I've been saying more or less the same words since my 50th birthday.  I don't feel 62, nor do I look 62. I hope the inside of me looks as young as I think the outside of me looks.

I had a birthday lunch with my three friends up the road.... we went to a little cafe in town that's been open for less than a year but already has a reputation for menu offerings that are deliciously different than all of the other cafes here.  And homemade desserts.... you must have dessert on your birthday--- it's the rule. Calories do count on your birthday, but that's easy to overcome when you're celebrating with good friends.

After lunch, the four of us went to see "August: Osage County."  Another ouch.  Great roles for both Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, mainly because their characters were so intense (not to mention dysfunctional). However... I love Meryl Streep (especially in "Out of Africa") and Julia Roberts is always adorable..... but gracious, the language in this movie was way over-the-top.  (I've stopped reading books when faced with four-letter words being used like punctuation marks.)

And yes, the language could have been toned down a bit for the characters in this film, in my opinion.  Still, the story of this family was compelling... the acting was extraordinary (no wonder Meryl and Julia were nominated for awards).... and I'm glad we all got to see it.  (This is not a film that the husbands wanted to see.)

We walked out of the theater into bright sunlight, in direct contrast to the dark and dreary setting of that movie.... and we all agreed that nothing, positively nothing, and positively no one in our respective families even comes close to the dysfunctional family dynamics of the characters in that movie. And for that alone, all of us were most grateful.