Well. Chipmunks. Well well well. I promised you a guest post from my best friend, Jenn, this week, and she has begrudgingly graciously obliged.

The thing is, she owes me. It’s a long story.

You’re in for a treat.

Which I hope is clear based on the fact that this is my first guest post in a year and a half of blogging.

No pressure, Jenn!

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As all you fabulous and wise Go Jules Go readers are aware, I am the lucky soul who gets to call herself Jules’ real-life BFF, as well as her heart’s — or at least her liver’s — inspiration.  You wonderfully literate folks also recently learned that last Tuesday was my birthday.

When I’m not busy reading flattering blog posts penned in my honor, I like to think of my birthday as infrequently as possible.  Way less than annually.  Every four years like the Olympics actually sounds too frequent.

Like a double chin dented by the rubber band on a party hat, birthdays over a “certain age” remind us that, although the cake is gone, the scars remain.  The buoyant charm of youth faded long ago, but the birthdays keep coming.  Like Groundhog Day, with epsom salt.

I still recall (who knows for how much longer) the days when I’d carouse for hours, stumble to bed at dawn, and then pop up at the alarm, ready to start another glorious day of being young.  These days, mornings at my house sound like a wounded herd on the move.  A herd that knows its way around childproof caps.

I didn’t always hate birthdays.  Once upon a time, nothing pleased me more than getting another year older.

It’s like she just saw her first pair of mustache glasses.

As an old man once said, youth is wasted on the wrong people.

These days… let me not mince words.  These days, I hold birthdays right up there with fungal infections and rectal exams.  Both of which, you’ll be tickled to hear, multiply exponentially with — you guessed it — birthdays.  Sigh.

While I still have my faculties, let me leave you with a final thought on the aging process.  The more birthdays we have, the more we realize that we travel from cradle to grave at a breakneck pace, and not all our body parts will cross the finish line.  So enjoy your kidneys and your knees and your ability to sleep through the night while you can.

And live each day as if it’s not your birthday, my friend.  Because time is one big Donner party, and you are magically delicious.

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How do you cope with birthdays/the aging process?  And how much do you love Jenn? (Well, just forget it. She’s mine.)