not just another day

Today is a rather auspicious day, equidistant between two points:

One year ago today
and
One year from today

It's my blog's birthday. I've been anticipating it for the past week. Or two. I mean, what does one do for one's blog after it circumnavigates the sun for a year? Bake it a cake? Give it a new template?


Carry its home (my beloved imac) around a sun candle, a la the Montessori tradition, while telling stories about it?




I want to do something special- I've always been partial to birthdays, remarkable moments that they are. It has always seemed to me that we don't celebrate them like we should. Birthdays, as you will note if you have been paying any attention at all to this blog, have always figured prominently.

To make another trip AROUND THE SUN is no small feat.



Do other people feel this way about their blogs, as if they are an ethereal, yet actual, entity? Something you think about when you should be thinking about something else? A good friend whom you depend upon? A third party in a relationship perhaps? I'm concerned I might be losing my mind. I'm a Capricorn, married to a Capricorn, and my blog is a Capricorn too, and I'm wondering-- just what is the prognosis for a Capricorn threesome?!

Anyway, in honor of my blog's birthday, I have decided to give it something that we all wish we could have in this life: a vacation. At least three weeks. But first, I am going to post a host of photos/events that I meant to post at various times during the past year. Old business, as it were. Time to get on with new business.

To protest the St. Patrick's Day parade being moved from Old Colorado City to downtown, the 24th street gang decided to make its own:


I read Peter Pan to the boys and became enamored with the Lost Boys and Neverland, and especially Tinkerbell. I discovered my brother drives around with her on his dashboard:


My friend Jene is writing a book. It's complicated to explain, but I helped her with some mid-life "research" by going to dance clubs and strip bars with her. I'll let you know when the book comes out. Here I am just before we left for Denver to go to The Church:


Some things bloomed, eventually, despite the odds against them:

My brother and I went to Oregon in October. We visited our mother's cubby and spent some time on the coast with our father, where I got to show my new tattoo its home:




Bennett with the camera. I have a gazillion of these, which I never know about until I upload my photos; they fascinate me. Here are just a few:







One of my co-workers received this letter, telling her that she had to pay a $25 "fee" to the Colorado Dept. of Human Services, because, get this, she is a single mom who received over $500 in child support last year! WTF!?


The boys wanted to hang this poster over their window because there was no space for it anywhere in their room. I said no. They did it anyway. It's beautiful, and it made me think: What if we turned science into stained glass?



It ain't the Olympics, but I won a gold medal in the giant slalom race at Ski Cooper. There were only three women in my age category, but hey, I smoked 'em all! G and B also finished gold and bronze, respectively. This day marked a first: Grant's time was better than mine.... it's the beginning of the end! I wanted to write something about the zen of ski racing, but that'll have to wait:



So there you have it.... I'll see you all in a few weeks. Until then, send me your bookshelf photos!