Three Years Ago

Three years ago I created this blog... I've been surprised at how well I've kept up on it, even though half that time I was in school. Being a full time student cut into my leisure time, but I liked to keep my family at least barely informed of what was happening in my life and inside my brain. So I don't blog everyday, or every week, but I've done okay with the once a month thing.

When I started it, it was the day after my birthday and I had wondered where I was so far in my life. I made a list of things I had done or accomplished in my life. Yesterday I received a letter of happy birthday wishes from my brother in-law. He wasn't sure about my feelings on birthdays, but they are quite similar. We both feel like... how did we get here so fast! I still have so many things I wanted to do in my life and it's almost over! Okay, it's not almost over. I have plenty more years left in me. But I'm one of those *list makers*. Yes, I own the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die, and The Wish List. Both of these books have plenty of check marks in them of places I been, and things I've done. But there is SO MUCH MORE that I want to do.

And one of them is get a college degree. That's a long term one for me. You can't just plan a trip to college, buy your plane ticket, rent your car and buy a Lonely Planet book, and be back to regular life in two weeks. You do have to plan your classes, pay for tuition, spend lots of money on gasoline to get you to classes and buy lots of books. But I tell you what, it's been a great ride so far, even though it's encompassed most of my life. What I started in 1980 won't be finished until 2010, at least.

So yesterday was my birthday, and today is my blog's birthday. Happy Birthday to us! The theme for my birthday this year was *books*. Josh gave me a book, Becca and Peter "gave" me a book, Machiel gave me a book, my niece gave me a book and earlier last week I bought myself several books at a really cool used book store. I think my favorite present was having my car cleared out, vacuumed, and cleaned, thanks to my husband. And going out to eat at Macaroni Grill with the fam and having some friends show up to join us was a great surprise.

Speaking of last week and books, I took a fun escape to Nashville to visit my granddaughter and, in a turn of events, got taken care of by my daughter. She had a whole list (we must be related!) of things to do while we were there. We went shopping, had a picnic and fed the ducks, went out to eat steak, had pedicures (Holy Red Toenails!), and went to the bead store. Oh, and the aforementioned book store. I told her I was like, to use the overused phrase, a kid in a candy store. I could have stayed in there all day (I didn't even GET to the fiction section) and promised that I would leave as soon as baby started fussing and crying. I came home with two overstuffed bags of books. Great deals, great fun, great inspiration, and something to look forward to this summer. Oh wait, I was looking forward to doing nothing this summer! But that isn't on my list, so I better start reading.

Thanks to everybody for all the birthday wishes. Facebook is great for stuff like that.