HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

Yes!! It's that glorious tiME of the year (roughly a 9.4-month period) that culminates in...wait for it...MY BIRTHDAY!!!

Feel free to applaud. Hoist a drink. Dance a jig. Freedom of expression rules here.

For the past 9 years, I've been celebrating MY BIRTHDAY as part of My Jenius utterings. This year has been different. I only recently got back into this groove, or actually, a new groove. We'll see how far this takes Me in terms of accomplishing soME things I've been pondering for a while.

Yes, "utterings" is a word.

I'm keenly interested in the Center for New Economy's "The Mysteries of Your Electric Bill" campaign. Our local power company is a monopoly, run by cronyism, charlatans and crooks, and it's way past tiME that soMEone jabbed a pointy two-by-four into its eye.

Now for those of you who have followed My trajectory here, you know I'm not a fan of the CNE. I considered them a cynical useless piece of Establishment fluff with the mental acuity of toejam. I may have been wrong, or more accurately, they may be evolving into a group that can prove Me wrong. If they do, I'll take partial credit for the upgrade.

In a recent developMEnt, I have a friend, a brother actually, who is on the opposite side of the world right now. He is working, aiming at completing a task that few could hope to even imagine doing. I haven't seen him in over two years and I hope that absence ends soon.

My Son continues to gain My admiration simply by being a more well-rounded person at 13 than I was at 31. And I don't think it's a coincidence that I have had only a tiny handful of "ugh" days since I met Mrs. Jenius seven years ago. For a person who had almost three years of continuous "ugh" days, the difference is truly life-changing.

Unlike other years, this version of MY BIRTHDAY has a greater sense of gratitude in it. Life isn't perfect, it never will be, and though there are several things I yearn to fix (mainly health issues faced by wonderful friends), I can accept that I have limitations. Not easily, but acceptance it is.

And as for the problems faced by My Island, I'm no longer consuMEd by anger, spiking into occasional rage. There's a sense that a change is coming, not because We willed it into being, but because the system is so befouled, so broken, that a change will happen anyway. A rotting log will eventually collapse under its own devastated weight. (Feel free to add imagery of creepy-crawlies and the appropriate MEtaphor related to the Fools who hollow out Our Island, skittering in darkness.)

In a little while, I'll pin My "BIRTHDAY BOY" blue ribbon on and take a couple of hours to sit soMEwhere and continue writing. (I'm doing NaNoWriMo again.) Maybe I'll get free coffee again. (It worked in March. And June. And September.)

Yeah, it's MY BIRTHDAY!!! Pretty much all year long.



The Jenius Has Spoken.