♫ ♫ Happy Birthday to me ♫ ♫

Hi guys,

  Okay it's officially my birthday this time.  (Last week I prepared a draft and thought I had saved it, but it posted instead). DOH!

  Apparently I suffered a case of premature postulation.  Happens to men sometimes as they get older.

So my apologies to those of you whom I messed up. The good thing though is that this means in some cases I get double birthday wishes. And as someone who looooves attention I consider this to be a very good thing indeed.

  Anyway.  Today is my big day, the twentieth anniversary of my twenty-fifth birthday.  Yup, I'm forty-five and I can't frikkin' believe it!  But no worries, in my heart and mind I'm mid/late twenties and could hang with any one of you.  Try me, I double-dog dare ya.

M'kay, on to my post.

I should write a book about my life." 

Sooner or later you're going to hear an older person say this. The term 'older' is relative of course, but I've usually heard this from seniors. I always roll my eyes whenever I hear it, to me it's always seemed rather presumptuous to believe anyone would find your life interesting enough to buy a book about it. But in reality I think many people are just surprised they've made it this far when they look back at all the close calls and stupid things they've done.

Why do I say this? Because some days I reflect on my life and wonder how I managed to make it this far. Like most of us I spent my teens and twenties feeling somewhat invincible and I've had my share of stupid.  There are numerous reasons I may not have made it as far as I have...

Close calls. I fondly remember the day I blew a tire at 70mph and almost lost my car while rounding the bend of a two-lane highway on-ramp, the same one I had been taking every night for years. Just a few weeks before that I had attended a performance driving weekend.  I'm sure that's what helped save me, plus someone was just plain looking out for me.

Bad decisions. Several summers ago a bird decided it wanted to nest on the security light in our carport (garage). She was persistent, so I put a towel above it to keep her away during the day and removed it in the evenings. It worked well for a while until the night I forgot to take it down, creating an electrical short which incinerated the towel. If it wasn't made of synthetic material this would have caused a house fire. To make matters worse it was my in-laws' home.  Not a great way to make an impression.

Pushing it. There were things I did to intentionally push the envelope. Like having sex on the edge of a cliff, or while driving. (I don't remember seeing them listed but I'm pretty sure they'd fall under the category of unsafe practices). Would I do it again?  Oh hell yeah.

The wrath of mom. My mother nearly murdered me a few times when I was younger. Like the time I decided I was going to chop down our birch tree on the front lawn when I was about seven. (The back of a hammer makes a great axe, or so I thought). Then there was the day my brother and I took home snakes that we had captured. My mom found out about them when one popped its head out of a sock as she was doing laundry. Apparently we didn't secure them well enough.
I'm not sure how I made it to my next birthday.
There were also things she never found out about, like the day my brother and I rode our bikes on the shoulder of a major highway in Toronto. I was about ten and she still doesn't know. Unless she's reading this post.  Fortunately I weigh too much now for her to put me over her knee.

Hmm. After looking back on this stuff, "I think I should write a book about my life." lol
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 For anyone who's willing, please let me know when your birthday is so I can mark it down!