May 28th, 2005, 1:30 am

Happy Birthday to Me

Well, it’s official. I’m old.

Twenty-four fucking years old, as of an hour and a half ago.

Just listen to the sounds of the words …. “twenty threeeeeeee…” …. that “eeeeeee” sound, such a high note. Say it now: “Twenty Foouuurrrr” …. hear your voice droop down, oarrrr … rhymes with sore, spelled like sour, smells like a bore. Good old twenty four.

As you might know, this has been a rough couple of weeks for me. Things have always gone my way — you know — college, easy enough; had a job before I graduated, made it into a journalism fellowship, got one good job and was promoted quickly to an even better one — things went well for Laura Fries.

Her technology was apple-shiny, she got to paint her house pink and green — goddammit!, and she seemed to always get her way.

But the fates get mad at girls like me, and so one of them took up her needle, reached down into the skein and threw me a neat little purl.

Now, I’m faced with a slew of legal charges, due to my aversion of government paperwork and my accident. Whatever amount of money I get from the insurance company to replace my car will go towards the legal situation, and lord-bless-your-soul if you think alt-weeklies shell out enough money for me to just up and buy a car.

I’m flat broke, and working my ass off to get those websites launched. In fact, yes, it’s true — I just got home from work.

I got a ride home from a co-worker, a chicken fried rock and roller, in an old van, listening to Nirvana’s Bleach. “What on earth am I doing?” I wondered as I waited for him to fill up his tank at the gas station. I’m in fucking Georgia, flat broke, no car, in van with some dude, listening to Nirvana, on my birthday.

This time last year, I thought back, I was at my apartment in San Antonio. I threw myself a little party … tacos, beers, some friends (read the post here). At some point, everyone left, and I went to sleep — only to wake up the next day, clean, pack, and drive to Florida to start my adventure. 6 weeks in Florida, 2 in Texas, 2 in Arizona, a crazy two months in Texas, interviewing for a paper in Vermont, flying out to Florida and then back to Phoenix for interviews, moving out to Florida in October, visiting Boston in November for the Neiman conference, going home to Phoenix for Christmas, flying to Atlanta on Valentine’s Day for three weeks for my new job; a week back in Florida, a few more in Atlanta, a week back to Florida to pack, a crazy drive up here, two weeks here in Atlanta, and then back to Florida for a week and a half, been back a month and I was so sick and tired of moving that I’ve stayed home every weekend since, glued to my couch and enjoying the sensation of not moving.

And then of course: velocity. The hood of my car coming up at me, and my heart pushed back inside my chest, where it belongs, I suppose, by a big pink bag with a smell I can’t forget.

So now I’m grounded, 24, sitting on the curve of my 1880s staircase in my Cabbagetown home, which has too narrow of a curve to fit my boxsprings up. It shouldn’t surprise you that I haven’t unpacked.

Here I am, another year older, several pounds heavier, living a life I’d never imagined and facing a life I can’t predict.

I won’t be here long — in two weeks I’m headed back down to Poynter, my second home, across to San Diego for the AAN convention (a second home of sorts, as we spent most summers there when I was growing up), and then finally home, really, to Phoenix for a visit with the parents — and, of course, a visit with a software company we’re about to renew business with.

But going home to Arizona won’t really be going home, because my parents will have moved by then, to a smaller house, closer to downtown, where they work. They will have just moved, so if my Nirvana and Hole posters are still there, they’d be packed away in a box somewhere. I don’t have a bedroom. My sister Shannon will have just graduated college — who knows where she will be. My sister Andrea will be home from her first year of college — who knows who she’ll be. It’ll be my family, but it won’t be my home.

I’ll be there for a few days, and then I’ll come back here. For the time being.

I’ve thought a lot about what my life could be like. How will I live in a commuter city without a car, without family or many friends? Will I decide to bite the bullet and put myself into debt, strapping the first of debt stones to my ankles in that good old American credit sinkhole? Will I tough it out, become an Internet hermit, and stockpile cash saved from not eating at restaurants all the time? Will I finally learn how to ride a bike, and lose my beer gut and secretary thighs?

“You can’t go back,” I told my sister Andrea, when she was away at college and missing home. “That old life isn’t there anymore,” I tried to tell her. Funny how I’m just learning that for myself.

Happy birthday baby. You rule.