Everyone has a  birth day, right? A lot of women my age begin to downplay the celebration, though. Not me. (In case you are wondering, next year I’ll be forty. Don’t hate me. Keep reading.) I love my birthday too much to want to stop the clock. In fact, I turned it into a birth week, then a birth month. I draw everyone around me into my irresistible vortex of celebration.

Sure, I’ve had my moments of Fuck, I’m getting old. I’ll never forget the night I was working at the bakery, and I realized I was exactly twice the age of the kid washing my dishes. And yes, the skin around my eyes is starting to sag – can’t say I’m overjoyed about that. And my hands have begun to remind me of my mother’s hands. However…

It’s spring. I believe that has something to do with my yearly onset of joie de vivre. Winter is hard where I live and the true melt makes me dizzy. The daffodils have begun to poke their pointy shoots out of the ground, and I can’t wait to see them bloom. I have so many lovely memories of daffodils that the smell of them intoxicates me – sweet, damp, earth, yellow and orange, brightness, sunshine. It must be spring. My husband has started his lettuce crop in the basement. The garage is full of roller blades and bikes. There is mud.

This is an odd birth-month year for me. Professionally I am so busy I was truly tempted just for a minute to skip my own personal celebration. Every day Wonder Woman battles Superfreak inside my head. Now, I like to challenge myself. I believe I am capable of great things. I have faith in my learning curve, but for the first time I’m wondering if I have bitten off more than I can chew. Time is collapsing in on itself minute by minute as my deadlines approach. I gave up last night – went to bed at seven-thirty with a box of tissues beside me, just in case I, you know, started sobbing. I hate getting tears in my ears. I keep telling myself I’ll get it all done (the classes, the books and all the little stuff too, like keeping my marriage cheerful, ha ha). Panic is not productive. It’s all good stress, right?

Right.

Right! Sooooooooooooo… Onward!

It’s not cancer. I have friends battling cancer. Their troubles make my troubles seem so tiny. I get that. I shouldn’t even be complaining. However my (princely) husband tells me my stress is valid, that good stress is still stress, that if I beat myself up for it then I’m just making it harder. I’m good at that. Put a flogger in my hand and I’ll direct it at myself. How kinky is that?!

It’s my birth-week, damn it! My birth-month. It’s spring! SoloPlay is coming out April 26th – that gives me great joy. It’s the book that created the world of Come Again, and I lovelovelove it.

I know I will do what I always do, over-prepare, over-analyze, be triumphant and not give myself a break before I move on to the next task. (I’m doing it again. Did you see how I did that?) Hmm. Time is going to pass. There’s just no getting around it. I would prefer to rock all over my edits, the last 10K, and my pastry classes but I’m having a little trouble getting my head in the right place to do that. There must be a magic elixir around here somewhere. A magic bullet, lol? I keep looking around, staring at my schedule tacked up on the wall, searching for an answer. But there’s just me. Me, with an excellent support staff of husband and friends and children and family and incipient daffodils and impending celebration.

Me, in gestalt with spring.

Stay tuned… Sologirl takes over the blog next week with sex toy reviews.