38!

I have several traditions on my birthday, including taking the day off to:

1. Throw things away.
2. Think too much about the previous year.
3. Blog.

So, here's my blog. And this is what I was thinking (and, yes, I've torn through most of the paper in our house and thrown quite a bit away).

When I was younger, everything was black and white, good or bad. Nothing was grey. Now, nothing is black and white. I thought things would be more grey. But almost nothing is grey, either. More or less everything is in color. Bold reds, mellow golds, deep blues, sometimes in sepia and grainy videos in my head and yes, sometimes even darkest black. Sometimes life is tepid watercolors. Rich with emotion, with feeling. The taste of words and sounds sweet and sour on my tongue, the shape and image of sounds. All of it. I'm both proud of myself and ashamed sometimes. But things are rarely grey.

When you're younger, you wait for time to pass. You have to be X age to do Y. 16 to drive, 18 to vote, 21 to drink. Life will start when you go to college, right? There's so much to do, but only when you get older. You don't realize how much you're doing already. Then you get even older than that (and I'm hardly old) and you want everything to slow down so you can do more. Sometimes you miss being bored. It's amazing.

At this point, I'm in between. Sometimes I want time to just hurry the heck up. Then I want it to slow down.  Time goes too fast watching my babies grow. Time goes too fast trying to fit all the stuff into my life that I want to. Time goes too fast now that I know my mom is so very sick. Then, darn the luck, it always slows down while I wait for vacation to come and speeds right back up when it gets here.

I'm happy to welcome another year. More time. More opportunity. Even if this year sucks to high heaven, even though my life is as cluttered as my house (despite the stuff I chucked), it's mine.