^{Birthdays are for SERIOUS CAKE!}

Here we are, once again.  This year, it’s 63, next year with any luck it will be 64.  Or not. Ugh.  Well, listen up kiddies, this is the way it goes: here today, a fond eulogy tomorrow with a few tears shed (if you’re lucky.)  It could be screaming relatives, duking it out over you in your coffin, squabbling over what's left of your meager belongings.  But in the midst of this propitious event I am resisting the dark side.  ( it's tempting, though.) 

This is a good day, actually I’m in the midst of a terrific week.  We do “birthday festivals” which means that you (meaning I) get to call all the shots, do anything *I* want,  eat out wherever *I* choose,  watch whatever shows or movies *I* pick, *I* can claim the best spot, the biggest piece of cake, etc. etc. 

It is all very nice and makes the Birthday Person (me) feel special (although it was Mom who went through two days of stone silent hard labor having me).  I love the Birthday Festival and extend appropriate festivally caking and gifting and deferrals to family and friends alike.  

You should know I invented Birthday Festival.   Please feel free to adopt it yourself.  It's VERY handy and has lots of possibilities.  Everyone is at your beck and call.  At least in your mind. 

 
^{feel free to send cake!} 

Birthday Festival is also a time of reflection if that’s your bag.  If you read me, you know it’s so my bag.  I often veer towards the dark reflection with a twist.  But today, not so much.   Today is too good and I'm in the midst of a grand week.  I am feeling I made it pretty far in this life with nary a hitch.  

From the "how am I holding up" physical vantage point - not too shabby aside from the shrinkage issues.  I think I still make a nice appearance.  But I’m not as tall as I was, dammit!  I was 5’6 ½” and now I’m 5’5” which bums me to no end.  No, I do not have osteo but I do have a big ass, which through intense exercise, then lack of it and then restarting has sort of reshaped itself into a newer bigger ass.  HA!  but it's not funny.  it could be my ass is so big, it's pulling the bottom half of me down into myself.  This cannot be good when I'm in my ancient years....half of me scrunched like a wrinkly slinky.

 I have long legs and I’m rather tall looking in spite of my shrunken visage.  I appear a hearty, strong, woman: broad shouldered and while a little rounder than I ought to be, I still appear powerful enough to help you lift something heavy.  And no one’s offering to help me across the street.  Not yet anyway. 

I am letting my grey hair grow out.  I asked my husband if he minded and he said he thinks grey hair is cool.  Then he proceded to tell me how odd it was he doesn’t have any (fucker!).  I asked because I’m 11 years older than he is and I think when you’re in your fifties, approaching The Great Eligible For Social Security Hump of Life, you might not enjoy a greying spousal reminder of where it all leads.   And to be honest, I wasn't so sure..I needed a little encouragement on this one.

(I confess there's a Nice'n Easy setup waiting in the pantry, should I chicken out.  I have experience in the chicken out.)  I’ve tried this before, going au naturale.  I think though, I like the silkiness of my undyed hair, the not bothered look to it.  And maybe the silver/whites will outnumber the greys and finally surround my face with a halo, rather than erasing it away.   So we’ll see.  But in this I am almost brave.  I know it will probably make me look older.  I think I’m willing to risk the real me to look like me.  I think.  

And I’m painting again.  Working on portraits of the grandkiddies that I’d been promising their parents and myself for years.   

I think I told you I stopped painting for a long while.  I went through an awful, utterly beaten down depression for over ten years, and while I kept my hand going with crafty things (mosaic-ing an entire kitchen, for example) and "keeping busy stuff" like focusing on this house and other projects, I steered away from the paints and the risk and passion.  But now the studio is cooking.  I’m taking a painting class, trying to meet up with other artists, something I'll blog more about a little later on.

I feel so good.  I feel like Cynthia, like me again, myself.  And I blog now, not as frequently as I’d love to, but I’ve got priorities.  Still, I miss you.  ::waving to you all:: 

I confess during this special week of fun and reflection, I consider where I’ve been and where I should be and what I could have been. The Woulda Shoulda Coulda Lets Kick Myself in The Ass Club.  I know I’m not a success by any stretch of the imagination.  I own that I may be a coaster.  It's possible I coasted once I got my bearings and that I stopped trying and got by. 

Or maybe the act of living, the sheer force of struggle through a life, like a plant pushing through the frozen ground is my little act of defiance and strength and perseverance.  I’d like to think that - that I did, am doing my best.  In fact, I hang my hat on the possibility that this is the best I could do until now and that I will keep trying to do whatever it is I must.  

I had a tough life from the getgo.  There weren’t many soft spots and I could have died a million different ways.  I celebrate that I didn’t.  In fact, I celebrate that I am whole and beautiful and strong and crazy and lucid and impossibly passionate. 

This week is my festival week to sing my songs:  I sing my praises, I sing my flaws.  And I belt out my joys: my sons, my beautiful sons who often move me to tears and their wonderful children I adore and in my songs: my poems, my paintings, my unique vision of life and my time in it, I sing my love and awe of life and this gift of my time here.   I sing softly of my husband, my partner, my friend and my fellow Festival Celebrant.  

Happy Birthday Festival to me and to all of you.  This is a grand week.  It might even be spring.  It's in the 40s this week.   Spring in January.  Just for me.