A Year of Living Dangerously

Today is a landmark day. It is exactly one year ago that I began writing this blog. Five days a week without fail. I leave the weekends to live more life and collect more stories. And continue to be amazed at how the ordinary can seem extraordinary, and how the painful becomes less so when you can share it as though you would over cocktails. It has been a wonderful experience to see my ever eventful life from a position of humor and to spin it at entertainment. Even if I am only confident that Charlotte and I are entertained. It has helped me to see the humor in the harangue. And to let it roll off my back like water off a duck. And it has in many ways spared my friends from having to listen to me rant endlessly about the high drama in my life. Lars’s constant competition to win the Lousiest Parent of the Year trophy. The plethora of nitty gritty annoyances heaped upon me by J.’s consistently moronic family. And his full on inability and unwillingness to deal with them. And the cesspool of trouble I eventually found myself paddling around in when I came to my senses about J. himself. OK – to be truthful, Charlotte still got an earful on a regular basis. And a few screeching emails in a bitchy howler monkey font. In fact, it was a weeklong series of pathetically amusing e-mail diatribes that prompted her to ask me “Why aren’t you blogging?” And when I responded that I am too lazy, she sent me a link to the very blogger website I write on. A superhero always. And one night, when the Big P had cursed me, and when I took the caffeine-loaded version of Pamprin instead of the sedating variety, I was wide awake with a chardonnay and a few thoughts in my head that simply would not go away. And since it was 1 am and too late to call anyone to share my darkly humorous take on the events of the week, I committed to writing my theories and thoughts. And kept doing so. Even I am amazed at how much material one life can produce. And I am living it. And now I wonder, as my life takes a turn down a calm and blissfully happy road, what on Earth will I write about. I recently asked as much of Charlotte. She paused to compose her return email and hit the send button within just a few minutes. She reminded me that I am perimenopausal, divorced from a lunatic, falling in love with a darling man, just escaped from a good-relationship-gone-totally-haywire-with-a-Jekyl-and-Hyde-with-a-completely-disturbed-family-with-no-boundaries, have my mother for my mother and my brother for my brother, work with people for a living, and have hilarious friends with very vivid lives and great story-telling abilities. Bring on Year 2. Thank you for your patronage. It pleases me beyond description to know anyone has read what my heart seeks to write.