Birthday Greetings from My Birthday!

Sorry to have gone a bit AWOL but it's been busy up in this berg.  But today is my birfday!  Sing and dance!

So far, my 40's and 50's are turning out to be the best times of my life.  I'm 53 today, and I've never been so calm and SANE (which, y'all know, is saying something).

I know - people (women) are always saying "My 50's are the best time of my life!" and when you're Cher or Suzanne Sommers, with money and natural talent and good looks, well.  SURE.  Your ANYTHING's are gonna be good.  But you know what?  It's really true.  Lookit how many of us (men too, Q - don't think you're outta this) have finally come to terms with so much in our lives?  Childhood trauma, failed and working relationships, the size of our asses, addictions, all of that.

It's wonderful.  It's freeing.  It's WEIRD.  Yo, I'm OLD.  Freaking FIFTY THREE.  That is a number I never imagined during my lifetime.  53.  Wasn't Aunt Bea something like 50? (Wiki says 57, but still)  It truly is odd how many things change while so many stay the same.

Por ejemple:  I still color my hair, still vain enough to not want grey.  But I go out of the house OFTEN without worrying about what I look like.  I go to the grocery store in my yoga pants and a sweatshirt almost every day.  It's weird and WONDERFUL to be so relaxed about stuff like that.  It just don't matter no more.  Wait - I mean, it matters sometimes!  But other times?  pffft.  I'm old, bitches, I don't HAVE TO worry anymore.

I loved raising Mike, he's the bee's knees.  But JEEBUS CHRIST ON A MATSO CRACKER I am so damned glad he's grown.  I love kids, love the way they play and the way they sound, but I also want them to go HOME at the end of the day.

I love holiday lights and stuff - OUTSIDE.  I am not decorating my house for about the 3rd year in a row.  It's awesome.  I don't feel like Scrooge, necessarily, I just have always sort of resented the frantic pace of the holiday season, and now I can listen to great holiday jazz (Ella Fitzgerald!  Frank Sinatra!) and not worry about plastic holly and the dogs eating the ornaments. 

It's the best of all worlds, this age.  I was terrified of it.  Who wants to get old?  But I am digging the hell out of my life these days.

WRT Jeff's parents:  Oh holy hell.  That situation is FUBAR.  They are old and ill and refuse to do even the most basic things to alleviate their own suffering.  There is still MRSA and blood infections and cellulitis and Grovers disease and edema so bad that her legs LEAK WATER.  They are in turns assholes and then vague and fluffy.  It's passive-aggression at it's worst and I have told Jeff I refuse to play anymore.  After all that rigamarole with the hosue cleaning (and they have commented more than once that the housecleaners did a shitty job!) and hospital rescues and all that - nothing has changed.  Thanksgiving was fraught.  I'm over it. 

And see?  I get to say that.  Because I'm old and I get to pick who/what/where I spend my time.  And I'm bitchy enough to enforce my boundaries these days!  When I was younger I wouldn't have been able to do it.  PLUS the drama would have fed my inner adrenaline junky. 

I need to put up a real blog entry, but this will have to do it.  I'm feeling too mellow to do justice to the story of the old folks, and there isn't much else to talk about.  Mike is taking me to lunch tomorrow!  He really IS the bee's knees.

I'll leave you with this: