Missing Eyes and Growing Older--All in One Month!

It's been a blur of non-activity around here lately. I guess I've been too busy celebrating our country's independence from those Commie English bastards. Oh, wait, no, the real issue is that Mercury is in retrograde, so it feels like everything happens in slo-mo, as if dripping with molasses--and you're constantly misunderstood when you try to speak.

OK, OK, not really. I won't ascribe all my issues to a tiny planet that orbits too close to the sun. But good lord there were some moments where it seemed easier to blame everything on that astrological event--especially the day at Trader Joe's when I saw a woman bite it big time on the linoleum floor. Really--face first down on the tile as if some force felled her like a two-by-four clattering to the ground. Then she got up, unharmed, and proceeded to drop her keys three more times. THEN, when I finally got to the parking lot to leave, a woman missing an eye drove past me. Yes, drove past me. All she had was what looked like an extra long eyelid where her eye used to prop it up.

It's just been a peculiar start to the month. The last couple of days were delightful--finally getting to spend some real time with Ryan alone for the first time in a month, enjoying the 4th between the beach, a pool, and a barbecue at my sister's house. She's leaving in less than a month to move to Portland, which I am in total denial about. More on that another time. It was a marked contrast to spending half of Sunday with heat exhaustion, 4 hours at Kaiser's Urgent Care center getting poked, prodded, and having blood drawn to learn that there was nothing much to learn.I had indeed been in the sun too long and it coincided with some other lovely ailments. I'll spare you that story too. Let's just say that I have to have a certain procedure (love that word; don't you?) done that none other than Katie Couric had televised. I LOVE hitting my mid-30s! Wooo!

Oh, yeah, then there's that: The birthday.

I honestly don't care that I am turning 34. In fact, I get to play on the beach for that too, and I couldn't be happier. But damn, when your body revolts on you it's hard not to have a moment where you think "Really? Is this what it's gonna be like?"
Plus, when you have a bunch of people in your family die throughout the years and you used to be a hypochondriac--well, it's the perfect storm sometimes. But you know what? In general, this is the best I've felt in a while. I'm done traveling for a little while, too. Which means I get time to study, turn 34, have some quality boy time, and make a run for the beach.