I am a woman of “a certain age” which William Safire describes, with the help of some friends, in a 1995 article in the New York Times Magazine. “The certain age suggested spinsterhood; the poet Byron in 1817 wrote, “She was not old, nor young, nor at the years/Which certain people call a certain age,/Which yet the most uncertain age appears.” Five years later, in a grumpier mood, he returned to the phrase: “A lady of a ‘certain age,’ which means Certainly aged.” Charles Dickens picked it up in “Barnaby Rudge”: “A very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of certain, age.”…The Oxford English Dictionary defined that sense of certain as “which it is not polite or necessary further to define.”

Safire learned from a Dr. Rubin that it was also a common term in France where it has “…a long history [referring] to women of fortyish and thereabouts who are able to initiate boys and young men into the beauties of sexual encounters. Fortunately or unfortunately, I’m living the English version…

I do have a lucky life: health, great family, fine friends and an interesting job. My apartment is comfortable, my car runs and I can afford to buy all of the books I want. While life is not absolutely perfect it is close enough to keep me from whining a lot.

I have a travel blog but since I’m traveling much less right now and I still like to write I decided to start on a new, perhaps impossible/perhaps not, adventure. A second DAILY journal. About interesting times, busy days, life in that ‘certain age!’

I went blog-trolling to see what’s out there besides travel and political blogs. A cursory look tells me that most personal, journaling/diary-type blogs are either written by relatively young people or foodies. There also seems to be many advice/instructional or sales blog sites. But I did not find any daily musings by people like me. Quite possibly that’s because no one is interested in the observations and meanderings of certain-aged people but the worst that can happen is that my brother and kids will use it to see if I’m alive without having to call. And I think I will have equal amounts of fun and stress with it. Stressed fun. Should have called it that. Anyway welcome to TODAY X 365.

Today I went to work.

In the evening my son, Steven, brought burgers and mango milkshakes from Flying Star and put together yet one-more-cheap bookcase for my ever-expanding collection of books, wonderful books.

Happy Birthday to me.