It's My Birthday And I'll Blog If I Want To

Yeah, it's my birthday, my 37th anniversary of my debut on this planet, and my 14th anniversary of being told that I might be leaving it (which is my dramatic way of saying "the day I was diagnosed with cancer?"). And there's so much to say, so much going on, and yet…as always, that whole sleep (or serious lack thereof) issue is bogging me down. So I'm just pre-emptively apologizing right up front here: whatever I do manage to get down tonight is going to be sketchy at best. But here goes.

I'm finally getting some distance, and concurrently, some perspective on my life. I can look back a pretty far ways (despite a notoriously bad long term memory, I can actually recall some things that happened 20 or 30 years ago), and see how the person I was and the circumstances I lived through have shaped the person I understand myself to be today. Some amazingly great things have happened to me (meeting my husband, the love of my life; moving back to my hometown and building a good life here; bearing and nurturing my two incredible children); some horribly bad things have happened to me (see above re: cancer). Some things (interests, relationships, personality traits) have dropped out of my life; some have continued through the years; some laid dormant for awhile and then came back, some have been overlaid with history until their original seedlings are barely recognizable. Roads have been taken; roads have been not taken. More roads are opening up in front of me all the time (and I wish I had the time and the energy to pursue them all--or hell, any of them), and yet I feel fairly settled right now, more like a frontier farmwoman who is finally harvesting a well-tended crop and less like Johnny Appleseed, always on the move, busily sowing wild seeds wherever the wind might take them.

Generally, I like where I am, who I've become, and what I do with my days. There's more to hope for, more to explore, more to accomplish--but I'm thankful for every day, oh yes I am. No matter how much I whine and blather and bumble, and no matter how bleak the cocoa--it's better to be here than to be fading away, or pushing up the daisies.

But speaking of bleak cocoa and fading away, it's uncomfortably close to midnight and I really do have to quit and continue this another night. But hey, at least I finally blogged. Happy birthday to me!

^ Me celebrating my birthday with friends at the Melting Pot last night. Melty! Chocolate! Fondue! (With extra added bonus chocolate martini!) It just doesn't get much better than this, people.