Into the Deep Middle Ages

Yesterday I turned 45.

Just when I felt I was getting used to the Forties, I am heading towards 50.

I loved 44. I am a double digit girl and always have been. Double digits bring me luck and they run through my life like a magical current. I was born in '66, graduated from college in '88, and until a few days ago I was 44. (And yes, I loved 11-11-11, and it was a very good day).

It was a good year. A lucky year. A year of fruition after lots of years of slow, quiet and important growth. I ran a marathon, got two of my best magazine articles ever published (and the ones I am proudest of), hiked the Grand Canyon Rim 2 Rim 2 Rim, got a new job that is cool and different and doing some good for kids and schools, and am making the most money I ever have, when I wondered if I would ever make real money again.

I am growing, I am learning, I am lurching a little.

I am tired, I am excited, and I love my life.

A strange astrologist trained in an arcane system of Indian astrology told me in a small garden tea hut last January that my life would start getting better and more productive in the spring. Or at least new things would start happening. And that is true. He predicted a super productive five years (as long as I wore a moonstone on my wrist to balance my energies, which I am not doing).

I am still here and glad to be alive for one more year on this sweet earth.

For my birthday we went to Yosemite, the four of us, and spent two nights in a little tent cabin in Curry Village, with a heater and a single light bulb. We worried we would freeze, but ended up hot. The boys threw snow balls of dirty left over snow and prayed for a blizzard, and the Valley smelled like fall. On Saturday Benji said he felt like the next day would be Christmas. We hiked up to Vernal Falls and then Nevada Falls and my boys were so amazing they became celebrities on the trail. We ate dinner at the Ahwahnee, in the grandest dining room I have ever seen-one that bears an uncanny resemblance to Hogwarts.

Yosemite is one of my favorite places in the world, and after a weekend of hiking and climbing and soaking in that beauty my bucket is full and I am ready to forge on and do my best in the world. I will post a picture here, I promise.

This year I hope I will start my newspaper--for real!--fix my bike at the bike kitchen and do a triathlon, take guitar lessons and become really good at guitar, and go somewhere amazing I have never been before with my husband and boys. I hope Jonathan and I will start some amazing and bold venture together--something creative and different that will grow and do good and make us a good living.

To all who make my life rich, and sweet, Thank You. I am grateful.

Signing off for now, from the Middle Ages.