Good morning, John.  I guess I'm old now and you know how I got to be okay with it?  Here's what I did.  I lied about my age.  

When I turned 38, I realized that there was practically no difference between that age and 40, both in terms of how I was going to be feel physically and also how I was going to be perceived, so I just started to say I was 40 and now, it's been completely normalized for me, so there was no sense of like, a negative aging moment in this wonderful birthday, which was really great.  

I may have lived my entire life perfectly to have the best possible 40th birthday in isolation.  A part of that is having a really wonderful family and really wonderful child, and so I wasn't actually isolated.  I was with them, but I also have a lot of practice at and experience with finding community on the internet and I want to thank you, John, and also everybody in this community for being a part of that for me.  It's really helpful in these times, but there's a bunch of other reasons why I had a great birthday and I want to go over of them.

The first one is that I had time and a chance and the inspiration to write a song and so I'm going to play a song on this channel, which I haven't done in a long time.

There's a piece of our anatomy 
It's important and it's great.  
It's the final destination of that chocolate bar you ate
Inside it is inside and outside it is out
And I think it's pretty clear exactly what I'm talkin' 'bout,

But there's one thing that I didn't learn in class
And so I cannot help but ask
I wonder what's inside your butthole.
I wonder what's inside your butthole.  
Oh maybe it is astronauts and maybe it is aliens
all inside your butthole.  

Oh what's inside your butthole?
I always wanna know
What's inside your butthole,
I always wanna know.
Oh maybe it is dinosaurs and maybe it is monster trucks
all inside your butthole.  

If you saw the thing on Twitter, you know that I did not, I didn't write that.  It was written by an eight year old child who went viral on Twitter with a really good song about buttholes.  I added a little bit at the beginning and the end to round it out, but was this necessary for this to be a work of genius?  No.

Thing number two, here is serendipity, my son slept in.  He walked into the room and he said "Happy birthday, Daddy" when he usually says "WAFFLES!" or something similarly demanding.  

Thing number three, my parents-in-law watched the nerdfighter-create All Star/Smashmouth mashup with vlogbrothers clips, but they don't know what Smashmoth's All Star is, so that was their first exposure to Smashmouth's All Star.

Thing number four.  

Finding the original is amazing, but making a Smashmouth Sing-A-Ma-Jig is next level!

Thing number five, I was at the grocery store getting groceries and they carded me, and I was like, I'm turning 40 today and you think I might be 21?  And then I realized that I looked like this so it's a little less impressive.  I haven't aged a lot in the forehead.

Thing number six, None Pizza w/Left Hank has now almost outsold None Pizza w/Left John and it's on sale for another I think, two days?  So maybe that'll happen, but in any case, waking up to find out that that existed was cool.

Thing number seven, I literally finished my last edits to my book and sent them in and we're officially 60 days, two months, from publication.  NHHH.  

Thing number eight.  Katherine did something so nice that it literally made my year.  I want to explain what she did in order to have other people do it for other people, but I also just want to cherish it in my own heart and it would take too long anyway.  I don't have time.  I had to sing a whole butthole song and also Orin made me this ladybug sitting on a leaf rock sculpture and he made me a card and when I asked him what's on it, he said "A spiral" which I thought, John, you would appreciate.  

Thank you, John, for doing things for me.   Thank you everyone for doing this for each other.  It's the real stuff, right? It's the real stuff.  Sometimes I attempt to end eloquently.  Not this time!  It's the real stuff.

John, I miss you.  I'll see you on Tuesday.