Two Little Ducks (twenty-two!)

My birthday's coming up. Here's a list of things that I'm craving right now, for those who don't know what I *truly* desire.

- more vacation days
- a desk calendar, you know the kind you tear one page away everyday and you get a new cartoon? what the hell are they called?
- a funky mug the size of a pitcher, for my morning tea. Or maybe, just a pitcher
- 1955-2003: Legend Of Johnny Cash CD, I know I know I'm such a sucker for commercialism. But I do love his voice.
- Gift-wrapped Joaquin Phoenix
- this ultra funky blue bag/purse I've been eyeing
- Kamila Shamsie's "Broken Verses" available April 2006 (Bloomsbury)
- a shorter haircut
- a chocolate cake, obviously
- the perfect pin to match my favourite ring
- go to the Body Blitz bathhouse with a gal pal (see here)
- Edward Said's "Orientalism"
- an un-white-washed (read bland) recipe book for making "Indian" food (read vegetarian).
- everything ever written by Yeats
- lifetime supply of nutella
- a red Smart Car
- somebody to tell me I don't have to go to school anymore
- cowboy boots with the funky heels I saw last week
- a manicure
- summer

For some reason, for the first time in my life, I'm a little perplexed about turning a year older. There's something about 22. For a lot of people you're just about to finish school, starting grad school, or just starting to work. You're no longer the worry-free 21-year-old, and the question of about what, really, is the plan stan, starts taking a kind of sleep robbing importance. You're also far from the certainty of 25.

On occassion of my looming birthday, I've been thinking about why it feels so different this year. Maybe because this past year has been a series of milestones for me--but is that really the reason? I'm not sure. Or maybe because I'm the only one among my close friends to be working, and as a cause we're both not able to entirely comprehend eachother. Maybe because my mother bought "gold bangles" for me this year because she's "getting ready". I'm not sure where I stand, with almost anything. I'm going to be 22, yet I cannot yet refer to myself as a "woman". I'm a girl, a female, a distressing damsel, a maid, a lass, a chick even--but a woman? It sounds so definitive. While here I am, not quite sure of anything, really.