A Good Year

It's four am and I had to wake up to make myself little munchies of baguet with ham and cream cheese to satisfy a craving created by reading descriptions of Provencal food in "A Good Year."

Speaking of A Good Year, I would count last year as one of the best years ever. Oddly enough, I've been getting a lot of "oh, well, i'm sorry for your last year" hooha from people lately. Mostly colleagues. I've endeavored to explain that I'm not sorry for last year at all, but they get uncomfortable and i realize I'm out of my depth or they are - or we don't have proper scuba equipment or something.

Last year was, for the record, one of the best years of my life. The Best. I know the bad years, 2006 was a miserable year (actually 04 - 06 lumped together sucked bat balls). Then, the year I turned 22 was pretty awful, 21 wasn't much fun either, come to think of it. I was married both of those years and very, very ill and undiagnosed. Sucked for me on all fronts. I was also living in a dark corner of the midwest during blizzard season. A Trifecta of horror.

23 wasn't bad, I danced a lot, drank a vineyard worth of wine and champagne, made new friends, got divorced (first), gave my bosses hell and flew to lots of interesting, new places. 24 was also pleasant (at least the first bit) I was in love - that passionate crazy stuff, had plenty of money, walked to the beach daily, met a fair cache of truly weird people, I went to the Exotic Erotic Ball and met a tall, strapping irishman named Gerry who burred to me in Gaelic seductively after i figured out he had a thick accent and wasn't drunk or high to the moon.

Yeah, so I'm clear on the good and bad years. Really, people, surgery isn't the worst thing that can happen to you. Illness is pretty bad. Chronic illness is pretty bad to the nth power. Try living in a body that doesn't want you there - that's a bad year. One of the most valuable commodities in the world is time and I was fortunate enough for time to move at a wonderful pace for the past year. Now, I'm back in the thick of things and i feel like a kid again, with my head stuck out of the window of a moving car and the wind whipping my head back over and over again. I just want to enjoy myself and instead I have half the free world telling me their problems and seriously expecting me to facilitate a solution.

As if I give a rat's ass. Really. But then, I find myself skipping meals and getting dehydrated and suddenly i do care. Mainly because I'm sleep, food and water deprived. All that deprivation leads to heightened focus on minutae and I am such a victim. A total patsy. I wonder if it's intentional. For instance, 2008 thus far has not been the hottest year of my life. I'm just putting it out there, I'm not enjoying this year. I rang in the new year in the hospital, after deciding I was really, really tired of being in the hospital, but going back because I was more tired of the parts of me that still didn't work and were essential. I was alone and I sang a song to myself, turned out the light and went to sleep.

Also this year I've taken a number of hits. If I were litiginous I would be slapping people left, right and center with libel and slander suits. Alas, i'm not, thusly I pretend to ignore all the offal being slung, then rant and rave on my blog and to my parents about how unfair and cruel the digs - and diggers - are. We won't even go into the parts of me that still don't work, possibly will never work again, and my slowly dawning realization that the disease won some concessions I never could have anticipated. There is no morphine to make all of this irrelevant either. I'm wide-ass awake and, quite frankly, not a little pissed.

I think the latter half of 2008 is going to get tougher, but so will I, so hopefully it won't feel as uncomfortable (wool-sweater in summer uncomfy) as the first bit has. Spring is here and that always brings change.