'you know i like my girls a little bit older...'

Tomorrow I celebrate my birthday. My Mom will call to sing "Happy Birthday" to me in a voice that will cause me to place my hand over the receiver and whisper to Tool Man, "I think Mom's drunk!" Tool Man will shake his head and whisper back, "Your Mom doesn't drink before 9 a.m., remember?" "Don't be so sure of that," I'll think before responding, "Oh, that's right. Huh. Well, maybe I should!" Then Tool Man will shake his head at me in that exasperated way he has that pretty much says, "You're a nut," but rather than just say that out loud to me, Tool Man sticks to that whole "man of few words" routine he adopted after we got married.

Then he'll hand me a card he printed off the computer approximately 45 minutes before I woke up that he'll have signed "Love, Your Husband, INSERT MY HUSBAND'S NAME HERE," tell me to have a good day, and then take off for points two hours west because he has to work, then I'll gather up the boys and we'll venture to the Big City for a basketball clinic at 11 a.m., return home, then gather back up for a return trip to the Big City for a basketball game at 3:30 p.m.

That's the makings of a pretty damn fine birthday right there. Yep. I believe this is what happens when you get what's commonly referred to as "Older."

Except I hope like heaven there's a cake somewhere in this equation because it goes without saying I love me some cake. Cake buried under glacial mountains of frosting. I love frosting so much that I've mentioned my fondness for it in excess of ten times on this blog (and points beyond at various other blogs), all of which I'd link for you, but let's be honest. How many of you click any links when you stumble upon them in a blog post?

(ahem - I DO!)

Suffice to say, I love frosting. My appreciation to those of you who've put up with me when our conversations have veered in the direction of that topic. You know who you are (And you're probably wishing that, based upon some of the things we've talked about, we'd actually talked about my fondant fondness far more frequently).

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to go on and on about how special my birthday is to me.

(ahem - IT IS!)

No. The point of this post is to tell you why my birthday is so special to Tool Man.

November 15th marks the point in our marriage when I'm exactly eight months and four days older than Tool Man. If you know anything about me at all after spending any amount of time here, you can probably guess what that means:

Yep! It means that until July 19, 2009, I GET TO TOTALLY GO COUGAR ON MY TOOL MAN!

OK, so he's no Joe Jonas or Zac Ephron (But who is? Other than the actual Joe Jonas and Zac Ephron, duh!)(Also, you totally didn't click over to those links to previous posts, did you? I KNEW IT!), but Tool Man is totally cute, even if the only article of clothing he's worn in the last 15 years that qualifies as "skinny" is a black knit tie he wore at his job selling computers at the now-defunct OfficeMax, and even then he shouldn't have been wearing it because it was 1994, and he bought that tie in 1986 (approximately the last time such ties were fashionable) for his high school graduation, and if he'd known me then and asked for my opinion, I'd have shaken my head and been all, "No. Oh no, no, no, Huey Lewis, because that's who you look like with that tie on," but Tool Man starts with 'T' and 'T' rhymes with 'tight' and that's what Tool Man is with a dollar, thus why buy a new tie when one that's eight years old will suffice?

(sidebar - Tool Man shaved off his mustache shortly after we met because he asked my opinion of it and I shook my head and was all, "No. Oh no, no, no!" Think Kip from Napoleon Dynamite. That was Tool Man before the glory of love.)

(p.s. - Tool Man? If by some miracle of the Gods you actually read this post, I'm happy to be stuck with you)

Anyway, for a few blissful months, Tool Man's younger than me - even if it's not within what I assume is the standard cougar operating system of approximately 20 years younger - so he now must spend this time either (A) withstanding the advances of my advancing age, or (B) caving to my powers so I can paw at him as the wise woman I've become. As anticipated, when I informed Tool Man of this, he shook his head at me in that exasperated way he has that pretty much says, "You're a nut" (I know. I just repeated myself. Because I'm old now, and old people like to tell you the same stories over and over again!), but I told him that nuts were optional.

Now...frosting, on the other hand...