38

Every year, I try to take one nice black & white photo on my birthday. And I did. But our computer is still broken, so I can't download the camera, and what I have instead is a 5:45am phone collage in my sweatshirt.

That is 38 for you.

If you can handle me at my best, you deserve me at my worst - Ralph Waldo Emerson, probably

This was the first year I've felt self-conscious about how old I am. You sort of drift agelessly from 25-35, and then WHAM, you're slammed up against 40. I am past my prime, skin-integrity-wise, but I am just coming into it, skills-and-interests-wise. That is acceptable. I have chip clips to hold the skin up.

Last year my neck started to get soft, and this year I was pretty sure it would just suddenly collapse like a souffle, but it still seems to be hanging onto the bottom of my face. No grey hairs that I can detect. Health is holding steady. Plenty of room for future deterioration, which is how you like to try to keep it. Make the wolves work for it - don't just lay down and let them eat you.

For my birthday, we saw a movie and ate at our favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant. There was homemade chiffon cake, and earrings, and a beautiful new palette to paint on. My mother gave me a bouquet of flowers, which I dutifully set up and painted, even though it was an overwhelming array of folds and petals and reflections and colors. There was no way I could do it with precision in one sitting, so I did it frantically, and that seemed to work well enough. The entire canvas is covered in paint, anyway. It looks good if you don't get up close to it, and THAT is how you know it's fine art, folks.

This was a very good year. No ER visits with unconscious children, no gouts of blood, no family tragedy. We built a painting studio and filled it with paintings. The chickens laid eggs and mysteriously learned to crow. There were trips on airplanes, interesting people, chilly boat rides. I will take a hot baker's dozen of these years, please.