47

You can see my kids' teethmarks on these.

Recently I discovered a new number. As in, I hit a new age.

47.

I've been trying to wrap my head around that. I'm not young, and haven't been for awhile. But I'm not old, either.

But the number just sounds weird to me. How can I be that old?

I don't feel that old. Should I be grumpier? More chilled out? More jaded and detached? Wiser? Increase my yelling at kids on my lawn? Except for my old lady back, I don't feel old.

I do, however, find myself doing dumber and dumber things. Like leaving half a bag of delicious, frozen french fries to completely thaw in the cupboard. (I almost cried. I adore french fries.) And signing my kids up for swimming lessons for a day and time I'm at work, instead of on the weekend. And accidentally mailing my dad's birthday present to myself instead of him.

My kids help keep me young. At least this is what I tell myself. On my actual birthday, we went to a 4-year-old's birthday party at one those trampoline places. It was awesome!

I don't want to be someone who is embarrassed by my age or whines about it. Instead, I am flirting with denial by diving headfirst into things that make me feel young.

That includes recruiting a friend born before 1975 to go see Breakfast Club at the theater recently, just as I did 30 years ago. And downloading Depeche Mode's Violator because I saw on Twitter it's 25 years old. (How can that be??? I listened to that album obsessively after graduating college and taking my first newspaper job in Newton, Iowa. Before the Internet and Justin Bieber were born.)

Recently, my 4-year-old daughter discovered a Barbie show on Netflix. God, I loved Barbie as a kid. I used to play with my dolls secretly in the sixth grade, when it seemed suddenly babyish to like Barbie anymore, because I adored dressing them up and creating conversations for them. (This was well before Youtube, fortunately).

So I was all, oh, sure, honey, Barbie's great!

Now I also don't want to be one of those morally outraged people. But OMG. I thought by now Barbie would have evolved to an attractively dressed engineer or physicist, considering attitudes about women and careers have evolved since the 1970s.

Instead, Barbie and her friends hang out in her ginormous walk-in closet and talk outfits and shoes, and say things like "Ken will save us!"

My daughter absolutely loves this show.

Since Barbie now bums me out, I guess it's still going to be running that will keep me young.

And it's going awesome. After breaking my toe two months ago, I'm back up to 20 miles a week and can run 10 miles at a time, pain-free. Woohoo!

Next: planning a (possible) fall marathon and running the Palezoic 50K in November.

Suck it, Barbie.