My 35th birthday is rapidly approaching...

Is this a biggie birthday??  Maybe, maybe not.  For me, there are two times of the year that I really stop and reflect on the past, present and future.  The first is in September, my unofficial new year (reminds me of the newness of a new school year) and my birthday.  This year has me thinking a little bit about my mom.  Why?  Because when she was 35, she had me.    My mom was an older mother for her time (no fertility treatments either).  She was warned about potential complications in her pregnancy as a result.  She already knew that she would need to have a C-Section, as her birth canal was too narrow for normal delivery. 

The day I was born, was also almost the day that I died.  Evidently at some point during labor, the baby (me) went into distress and was "drowning" (this is how it was explained to my father, I don't exactly understand the details).  Dr. Schwartz evidently responded quickly, and delivered me without injury. 

It's a fun story...in the "I really love a little drama" type way.  The point is that I think of my mother, having her first child at the same age I am about to turn.  I also think of when I was in elementary school and when asked, my friends would say, "My mom/dad is 35."  There is something big and life changing about having a child and I often wonder if I will suffer some not having that developmental milestone in my life.  I know I am an adult, but I don't often REALLY feel like one. 

That's it for now... gotta work...

Laterz...

Cubicles suck for privacy...

So, with my new position, I'm no longer working from home, and now in an office, I have a very cute cubicle.  It has half walls, with glass that brings it up to PJ height.  No privacy.

So I don't have a lot of childhood memories.  My therapist and I have discussed this.  Given the age I was when my mother got sick (10 or 11) and passed away (13), coupled with my self-discover of my sexual identity, my mind has blocked out a lot of them.  I never really noticed until I had to consciously sit down and try to remember things from when I was younger.  The older I get, the more those walls come down and I talk about "when I was a child." or "My mother..." 

Music is one of those thing I'm most passionate about in my life.  I'm musically oriented; I connect memories with music, music can take a horrible day and turn it around or make a good day great, etc.  Occasionally, music that is associated with something in my childhood (that's been blocked) will unleash a flood of memories and emotions that can be a little overwhelming; not sad, just overwhelming.  This happened today as I was perusing through iTunes and somehow Crystal Gale came up as a search result.

My mom loved Crystal Gale, and as a child, so did I.  I thought she was beautiful and exotic and I loved dancing around to her records, especially, the song "Why Have You Left the One You Left Me For?" (I also loved dancing around to the theme song from "Gimme a Break"...who's the big homo?) I clicked on the preview for that and a couple other songs and WHOOSH...things just started coming back and I was a little overwhelmed.  I downloaded the CD and here I am at work, Crystal in one ear, a meeting in the other and feeling a little emotional. 

OK...time to go back to real work...like Farmville.

Laterz...

So I totally got yelled at by my getting-tastier-by-the-day friend Tim about not posting in a while...so here I am.  I don't know about you, but it's easy to get caught up in Facebook and forget that there is substantive places to put your thoughts, more so than a one line update.

So what's been going on?? 

Grad School has been insane.  I finished up my summer courses, with As in both.   I'm particularly proud of my research proposal; which I scored a 100 on, despite how tough this professor was.  I'm currently working on Human Behavior 1 and Macro 1.  In social work, Micro is about the person, Macro is about systems/communities/agencies.  This professor has created a class that is exactly what I always thought grad school is about; interesting readings, meaningful writings and good discussion.  My human behavior class is another story all together. :-\

This professor in not very engaged in the online format, the tool is pre-historic and there is so much work that I've had moments where I didn't know if I would keep up.  At the present time, without touching the extra credit discussions, I've still got a max potential of a 99 in the class.  My over-acheiverness has never been so strong.

In my personal life, E! and I have decided to part ways.  With me in grad school and him spending more time in TX with his new nephews...we started to resemble best friends more than boyfriends.  Rather than hold on until someone got hurt and someone else was angry, we decided to remain friends and move forward.  It's working VERY well.  We still went to see P!NK in concert and had our vacation to Vegas. 

I will say, it's tough being single again after almost 3 years.  With grad school and a 45min. each way commute I don't have the same time I once did to date.  Don't worry faithful reader...or readers that I have to get back to being faithful...there are already some very FUN dating disasters already to discuss...one involves Halloween, a cop and a ditch.  That will be a follow-up post.   

OK - gotta get back to work...and I'll post again soon...unless I want Tim to beat me (ok I sorta do...but that's another story). 

Laterz...