Me about half an hour ago, just woken up. Still processing tequila and filet mignon from last night. Chicken pox scar above eyebrow.

It’s my birthday today. I don’t often perform self-assessment on my birthday, but I’m feeling very low-key about this year so why not run some analytical checks upon the thing that is me?

I have to say there’s been a lot, a LOT of changes since this time last year. In 2010 I was a mass of nerves about my upcoming move to the House of the Elderly Relative; nerves and doubt and feelings of doom. I was sunk kind of low, financially. I was depressed in a low level, high functioning way that spread a thin pall of ugh over everything.

So that’s different. The move was a smart thing. Caregiving is hard, but having other pressures eased has given me breathing room and space to make things better for myself. Tax time was a breeze (lord, who types that?) and my quality of life is just higher all around.

There are pictures from a year ago of me eating ice cream in San Francisco. Huh? How did I do that? My tolerance for lactose has plummeted to zero in 12 short months. So that’s different, too.

There are also pictures of me from a year ago that show the big, obvious change, the one everyone comments on, the one I enjoy but also have amazing ambivalence towards; that would be the diet-and-fitness regime that has decreased the size of Hambox since last summer. I’m not going to unpack it all, as they say, right now. So for now: I look better, I feel better, I am actively working and planning on how to make this a permanent change.

Mother’s Day, as usual, is nipping on my birthday’s heels, lending and deep and complex bittersweet to everything I am experiencing. This has been the norm since losing my mom in 2003 — the week leading to the doublewhammy of birthday/Mother’s Day is happy weepy happy weepy. This has not changed at all.

I had a wonderful prom for my birthday last year. This year, there’s much less to-do. Partly due to anxiety about Mother’s Day on Sunday; partly because I seem to want to be all me-me-me every other year. Partly because I can’t quite believe how old I’m getting; partly because I am trying to be a grownup while regarding the day of my birth. I actually requested “no presents” for my little get-together on Saturday. That is a first, if you can believe it.

This year I will be celebrating my birthday with someone who, well, is kind of sort of a beau. Don’t freak out, it’s still brand new and the future (as the future tends to be) is totally uncertain, but my admirer or suitor or manfriend or whatever is going to take me out tonight. On my birthday! And I get to wear a party dress! So that’s different.

So yeah. Things are pretty good and I feel pretty grateful that I plopped into this world, this many fingers ago.