This Time Last Year

Happy birthday (almost) to me. I like to think of my birthday as my New Year's. It's a time to be reflective, it's a time to think about the last year, and a time to think about the coming year and all I want to accomplish.

Same as last year -- I've spent the past year focusing on trying to get pregnant. And same as last year -- I will spend the next year focusing on much of the same. Although the difference is, by the time my 40th birthday rolls around, I will know one way or another....I will have a baby of my own, or I will be working on adopting.

And by the time my 40th birthday rolls around (unless I've just given birth in the past few months), I want to be back in my skinny clothes. I want to get rid of this pudgy stomach and muffin top. I want to look the way I used to in a pair of jeans.

And I hope that by the time my 40th birthday rolls around, I will be happy turning 40, that I will accept 40 with grace, honor and happiness.

Having accomplished at least one of the goals above will go a long way in helping me meet 40 with these virtues.

I wrote that a year ago tonight. I do not have a baby of my own. I don't have that reflection I want when I'm wearing a pair of jeans. I still have the pudgy stomach and muffin top. But I do know that I'm adopting. I do know that in less than two years, I will have a baby.

I don't just know it in my heart, but I know it. I've got an expanding file folder of paperwork, bank statements and credit card receipts to remind me. I got my passport the other day and today I received my appointment notice with Homeland Security for finger printing.

And so on the eve of my 40th birthday, I can only look forward. I can't look back at what could have been. At what should have been. I remember what FG said at the one support group meeting I went to. "None of us is promised anything."

I will spend tomorrow evening with some of my best friends in town. And on Thursday, I will head to Baltimore for the weekend and some of my best friends ever. A high school friend. Museum friends. A Rochester friend. And Bubbles!

And on Monday, I start the new me. I start my "MILF training." :) I begin working out and watching everything I eat. And weighing myself and weighing my food. And watching out that I don't become the person I became four years on the inside, but working my ass off (literally) to become the person I became on the outside.

Happy birthday to me. I won't let 40 get me down. I will own it. I will embrace it. There are only good things to come.