In Which Jill Counts Her Blessings in a Roundabout Sort of Way

I haven't blogged in a while. I haven't had much to say. I'm not comfortable with blogging just for the sake of blogging. I think that if I don't have anything to say, I should keep quiet lest I prove that I don't have anything to say.

I don't have anything adoption-specific to say today, but I do need to whine, and I don't see my therapist, John, until next week. This month is our 6th anniversary. I should buy him a present. Six years is ... what, wood or iron or something, right? I miss John. I used to see him a lot more but he's decided that I am a functional adult - or, at the very least, that I'm no more messed up than the average American - and so I only see him a few times a year now.

That's okay, I guess. I mean, I am busy. I pretty much live at the library now. I got a really nice promotion so I work full-time and I have benefits and everything. I also have a desk now, and an official Maricopa County ID badge. Also, to answer the question that people always want to ask about working for the government, no, this does not get me out of jury duty. I got a summons for November 1st.

Anyway.

Part of why I haven't posted is that I've been sort of a bear lately. Well, not all the time. I mean, I've been a bear quite a bit lately, but I've also had plenty of those overwhelmed, sobbing-on-the-couch moments, so I've been like a bear with a mood disorder. I blame the calendar - it's October. I always get depressed in October.

Part of it is my birthday (this Sunday, if you were wondering), which is usually not a particularly happy occasion, and part of it is what my birthday represents - another step further away from the life I thought I'd have, and another step closer to dying alone in a house full of cats. Except that I'm allergic to cats, so they would have to be robot cats, which concerns me, because what do you do if your robot cats don't get along? Can they be re-programmed? Should I get a robot dog to keep them in line? So many questions.

In addition, I can think of no less than twelve years when weird or bad things happened on or around my birthday. Car accidents, panic attacks, deaths, hospitalizations, 9-hour solo shifts at the hair salon ... and, most notably, a positive pregnancy test. Happy birthday, right?

Every year I think, this year will be different - nothing bad is going to happen, and my birthday will be a happy day. I am very nearly always proven wrong. Good things have happened - the first birthday I had after placement was made quite happy by a great visit with Roo and her family - but it seems like it's rare that I can shake what I have come to refer to as my birthday curse.

All week I've been waiting for something to happen. Nothing too bad yet - although I did find out the other day that a man I greatly admire has a girlfriend who is roughly half my size and has limbs like a stick insect. But that's okay. In twenty years, those stick-insect arms will probably become brittle and arthritic, and my chubby arms and I will have a house full of robot cats for company.

I digress.

While nothing catastrophic has occurred, a lot of little things have gone wrong. I could list them, but I'm trying not to dwell on them, because when a lot of little things add up, they're something big. Like library fines. Twenty cents per book per day for an overdue fine doesn't seem like much, but if you have eight books that are two weeks late, you've got a fine of more than twenty dollars, as I explained to an irate patron today.

But I don't want to focus on my ruined Crock Pot meal, or my three new bruises, four scrapes and blood blister. I want to forget that my electricity went out while I was at work the other day and I had to replace the contents of my refrigerator. And I am not even going to get into how many stupid mistakes I made at work this week (27) or how many times people swore at me (2). I don't want to get so shortsighted that these individual twenty-cent fines are all I can see.

Because a year from now, when I'm panicking about turning 29, I'm not going to care about any of that. I probably won't remember any of it. It's not going to make a difference. It's not important. Two years from now, when I'm sobbing into my breakfast cereal over my lost youth on my thirtieth birthday, I won't remember this year, or next year. Ten years from now ... well, ten years from now I'll be pushing 40, and that's scary. But the little things are going to fall away and I'll probably have ruined so many Crock Pot meals that I'll have learned to like them that way and I'll be able to do my job in my sleep and maybe I won't bruise so easily as I get older. But what's important to me right now, and what will be important to me next year and the next year and in ten years and every year after that, is that the Unexpected Birthday Occurrence of 2008 brought me Roo, and that I placed her for adoption, and that it is the best thing I have ever done.

There's some vaguely cheesy quote out there about how this thing and that don't matter but what matters is that you make a difference in the life of a child. I'm too lazy for Google right now. But it's true, isn't it? None of this, not the Stick Insect Girl or the Crock Pot and certainly not the robot cats, none of it will matter in the long run. What matters is Roo. I feel cheesier than a fondue pot for saying so, but what matters is that I made a difference in her life (and the life of her family) - and that she's made a difference in mine.

And nothing, not even a lifetime of bad birthdays, can take that away.

Hey, maybe John was right. Maybe I am functional after all :)