I guess I’m going to be 49 soon.
It’s not wearing on me as much as I would normally expect it to. Turning 49, and ultimately 50 next year, is more about the idea that I have another birthday, which I mostly avoid because I’m uncomfortable having anyone make a big deal out of me any more. Erin and my mom always want to buy me stuff, and we’re definitely at a point where spending money should be done for important stuff, and birthday gifts don’t usually fit that rule. Nobody’s got excessive cash this year, so I’d rather avoid the sense of obligations. Plus Erin and I have our wedding anniversary the following week and there’s not a lot of ways to actually celebrate right now with the world still in a sort of holding pattern. Not that I’m sure what to do anyways.
But we hit our two year anniversary of arriving in Michigan this week, and the weather is turning to fall, after one final stab at being warm, we slip to the mid-to-low 60’s next week, and the 50’s after that. I’m hoping for some actual autumn storms too. We haven’t had a dry summer so much as a mild one, so the rain we’ve had hasn’t been incredibly impressive (but better than California’s “No Rain” pattern we’d suffered through for 20+ years). I’m excited to be sleeping with the windows open instead of having to run the air. I’d still love it if we got a little more sound from our river, but the night sounds here are decent. There’s the train that seems to come through right when I go to bed. Erin loves it, I started with tolerating it but have gotten mostly used to it. It’s less obnoxious than Bean and Gaiman wrestling around all night. And as it gets cooler, I’m hoping the cats will want to cuddle up more. Especially Gidget, who has been sleeping on a heating pad for cats that Erin’s aunt sent to us shortly after we moved here. She’s been more a living room cat since Gaiman arrived, but she’s always been a cuddler so I’m hoping the excuse of fall-to-winter weather changes will pull her back into the bedroom with us.
I know that I’m sleeping okay, but I’m waking up and going through the day almost as groggy as I did before I got my sleep apnea machine. It’s probably emotional, maybe also a bit related to my health in general. But other than fighting for breath when I bring in the groceries, I don’t feel any worse than I have for the last few years. I’m not in love with this new normal, but I’m accustomed to it at any rate.
My brain is starting to become less reliable. Not that it was ever in stellar working order. But my ability to just pull actor names or song and movie titles and so on is beginning to wane. Likewise, when I read some memories I posted on Facebook only in the last few years and I mention something seemingly very important to me at the time, like a job I was trying to get, or a story I was attempting to write, I can’t for the life of me seem to figure out what those things were. Obviously they weren’t nearly as valuable as I thought they would be. Whatever that job must have been would have paled to the one I wound up in at Parmatech anyways. And the stories… They all just run together now. They only matter if I actually wrote them down, and too often I didn’t.
I’m trying to pull out some of my old “toys” though. Characters I used to write just for fun. I know I’ve referred to it as a crutch before (is that an insensitive term? I’m going to have to maybe rethink it going forward), but writing for pleasure is still my number one priority at this stage, so it’s better to unload the action figures, such as they are, and play with all my old favorites. It’s more important that I can think of something for them to be doing. And, in most ways, it’s as close as I get to hanging out with some of my real life friends, who I would otherwise no longer get to see.
Okay, short post tonight. Gaiman just crawled up on my wrists and is looking at me like he wants my full attention, not just little nuzzles in-between writing. And he’s too cute for fucking words this one, so I’m gonna give in.
