March!

Can you believe it is March Eve? How did it get to be almost spring? How did I get to be plenty-nine? In my head there is a disconnect between the age I feel I am and my actual almost 39 years. Sometimes I will be thinking about someone or other who seems very "mature" to me, and then I will realize "Oh, crap! That's my age!"

Still, life is pretty good - much better than when I was 29. When I was 29 I was miserable, living on the prairie, conflicted about my future, plagued with insomnia and (in retrospect) in need of some serious anti-depressants. Did I mention that I was miserable? Not at all a happy time in my life!

Thankfully, things change - a lot! Despite being closer to pre-geezerdom and still having a lot of goals I've yet to acheive, I find myself feeling relatively content. I have a good (if small!) family, good friends, a good job, an inquisitive mind, a place to live, food to eat. All in all, not too shabby! And March appears to be bringing good things...

Corteo
To celebrate the coming of March (and fill my monthly theater/concert/performance quota), I bought tickets to go see Cirque du Soleil tomorrow night. I am SO excited! A couple years ago a friend gave me a ticket to see Varekai as birthday gift. Before that I'd never had much interest in seeing Cirque (mostly because I had no clue how cool the performances are!). I've never been a big circus person. I don't like entertainment that uses animals and, as everyone who has seen It knows, clowns are creepy. But, oh my gosh! Those first few moments of Varekai, watching that young man fall, Icharus-like from the sky, are so breathtakingly lovely that the show would be worthwhile even if the rest of the performance sucked like an industrial grade hoover (and it totally doesn't).

You (or at least I) Don't Need Meat!
It has now been 29 days since I started my vegetarian experiment. The tiredness of the early days has gone away. I'm not sure if this is thanks to the magic of multi-vitamins or just normal cycling, but I feel great. I'm still not sure if this is a permanent lifestyle change or not, but (for the moment, anyway) the reasons to continue seem to me stronger and more plentiful than the reasons to stop. It's been a while since I shared any of my culinary experiments, but I'll try to post some recipes soon.

Psychic Friends
For a few weeks now my morning alarm has been replaced by puppy wake up service. Lily has grown out of her need to awaken everyone in the house around 3 a.m. and parlayed her awake making skills into replacing my alam clock. Every morning around 7:27 a.m., she starts sweetly nuzzling my neck until I wake up. It starts out gently, and then the more I stir, the more she wiggles. Since she cannot (yet) tell time, the most entertaining explanation my dog has the shining. Any day now I expect go out to the mailbox and find that a W-2 form for one Liline C. Papillon has arrived from the Miss Cleo's Psychic Friends Network. Or to make a long story short: Yes, I am still happy I got a puppy! And yes, she is still adorable (not to mention really spoiled - she makes my other dog, Baxter "Baby Dog Duvalier" Wigglesworth look like an ascetic!)