As time marches forward, it continues to try and impress me into a service of maturity which I think I subscribe to quite admirably.

I tend to see myself maturing like fine wine.

Well, I guess that’s not true. More like Boone’s Farm wine — an adequate $4 dollars worth of maturing.

I still watch cartoons, I have toys on my desk and I have learned more than once that sometimes, scraping dried Raisin Bran that’s barnacled itself to the bowl can  get under your finger nail and hurt incredibly. I just reaffirmed that Wednesday morning in fact. A very proud moment.

A slightly more realistic version of aging has made itself apparent over the last few years, however, in regard to budgeting out my tax returns.

I just got my taxes done very recently and am getting about the usual back — a little more in fact. It’s a nice amount for me, though not enough obviously to buy me a hideaway in Nassau leaving my pirate dreams largely unfilled. A pity. I’ve got the eyepatch.

I’ve come to look forward to sitting down with my amount and figuring out what I’m going to do with it. I started this process a few years back, not because of my glaring immaturities that represent my cartoon-watching self, but because I was finally getting returns that didn’t coincide with those fun facts of life that suddenly crop up when you feel you can put money away.

Car problems, house problems so on and so forth.

Things still popped up, but I was finally able to ferret money away for various purposes. Last year, was the first year I was able to really divide things up, finally running out and getting a bike after a long, long time.

There’s been a number of years where I wanted a bike, but larger life issues always seemed to get in the way.

I finally had the bike for all of a summer before some tool dipped into my backyard and rode off with my bike, a moment that nearly drove me into a one-man act of vigilante justice just like Patrick Swayze in “Next of Kin.” And if you don’t know “Next of Kin,” then you have failed in appreciating the tiny nuances of 80s action flicks and Swayze’s brand of action.

And yes I wrote a sentence with Swayze, nuances and 80s action movies. I win this week.

Unfortunately, I’m back to having to get another bike which will be under lock and key no matter where it goes. I might even take it to the bathroom with me. We’ll see where my wild life carries me.

The point, in my random, obscure way, is that I feel I’m at a point in life that allows me to sit fairly comfortably. I’m even going to take a step forward into the exciting world of savings accounts.

Yeah, extreme!

So where does this set my maturity in terms of my actual life numbers? I’m not sure really, now that I think about it. Maybe it seems like I’m finally catching up to where others are.

Maybe I’m reaching a point in existence that has me thinking ahead to maintaining a quality of life that lets me do the things I still want to do.

Maybe I should watch “Transformers,” and think it over a little more.