Reality? It bites.

I gotta admit, turning 40 and having Rakes look at me like he is in this picture make me more than a little nervous. It's like he's saying "OK. You're the Dad, I'm the kid, and you're responsible for me being here. Don't screw it up."

Meanwhile, on most days I'm just doing everything I can just to make it until 7 o'clock, where I then rely upon my old standby of just winging it and hoping everything works out.

So tonight, amidst the chaos that is bedtime around here and while the boys were splashing enough water out of the tub to fill up Lake Eerie, I googled "things people accomplished at the age of 40".

Courtesy of www.personalfinancebythebook.com are a few things I found out.

• John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, a mother of six who occasionally wrote for magazines, published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an antislavery novel of such force that it is generally recognized as one of the causes of the Civil War.
• Jean Eugene Atget, now considered one of the greatest photographers, took up photography.

Glenn orbited the earth and I'm just hoping Trot doesn't decide to take a whiz in the carton of blocks at school. Stowe writes the definitive novel on slavery and Rakes is obsessed with the WWE. Atget takes up photography and I'm freaking out over Ciera someday realizing she likes boys and then I've gotta buy a gun and then I'm pretty sure me, Rakes, and Trot all end up on www.smokinggun.com and Kevin Smith buys the movie rights while I'm in jail and I end up on Maury pleading my case.

Can I just go back to 30 and get a do-over or something?