36

    The obligatory after birthday reflection post is here. Another year. Thirty-six. 36. Last year, at 35, my only complaint was how unappealing the look of 35 had. This year, I've no complaints, 36 is such a round looking number much more aesthetically pleasing than 35. Needless to say, age rarely bothers me. The husband glibly reminded me that I'm closer to forty, but then 40 looks pretty, too. I must have a thing for even numbers, which will work out quite well in the long run.
    The greatest upsets of my life happened at thirty-four and thirty-five; the changes were enormous, the stresses left me gasping for breath, and more tears have flowed from the events of those years than ever before. It's not a comforting existence spending months waiting for the other shoe to drop, that next bad thing to happen. I've a whole list of bad things that paced themselves every couple of weeks to every month for roughly sixteen months. These months had their joys, but the hard things were glaring and quick as a stab to the heart. For the first time in my life I became intimately acquainted with panic attacks, specifically with the fiasco of a frozen house and the dealings with an insurance company, the move to Arkansas, the vandalism to the PA house, the financial insecurity of two mortgages, and a buyer/renter who turned out to be the wicked step sister of Cruella DeVille. I'm fond of saying "I live a fabulous life" and that "It makes for a good story." This is the Reader's Digest Version, the unabridged version will appear someday in an autobiography of how life was calling the shots faster than I could comprehend and react. It's a strange sense of being drug along, helpless, somewhat like drowning, everything completely out of your hands and relentless.
    Life has always been a simple matter of dealing with the next thing for me. It worked well for a good portion of those sixteen months, but the next thing started coming in multiples and very little was done to keep up with the emotions of all the chaos. I hit the wall too many times. It's taken a while to ease back into a sense of normalcy (for me, because you know I'm as unorthodox as they come). I feel the stress finally got to my overall health, which I hate using that card, but some trips to the doctor, a trip to the ER a few months ago, and a surgery later, I can't ignore it. I donated an organ to stress (or multiple pregnancies-- they could be related). My uterus turned on me, the ingrate... so it's been chucked and despite the long healing process, I have felt more myself in the last few weeks than I have for the better part of two years (or more-- apparently Paxton was a big reason, the organ took up hating me). All other details aside (because 1: you don't want to know and 2: specific details freak me out), I have found my emotional range is a nice plateau, the roller coaster disappeared. I have not had one migraine since the surgery in June (which is gargantuan in my books because I've had them since I was seventeen), and I feel more like me.
    Thirty-six is promising. It's a bit more settled. It's adventurous. It's creative. It's motivated. It's snarky. It's not dreading the days. It's welcoming. It's laughter, uncontrolled. It's the smug reality that I'm skipping course, gray hair for smooth, white strands. It's twisting the realities of negativity back to the positive where I've always been more comfortable. It's remembering that I have this blog with the cute subtitle I gave it years ago of "accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative." Which also means I'm back to blogging about this life, one moment at a time (because you really didn't want my blog posts a year ago). Yep, I think thirty-six and I will get along just fine. Cheers.