A year…

Newsflash.  In case you’ve lost track, come Sunday I will have avoided killing myself for another 365 days.  I’ll admit.  I tried for that accomplishment.  Heck, I almost DID manage to kill myself  a couple of times.  Still, all that ends well…

So, since I wrote “Happy Birthday…” a year ago my opinion hasn’t changed much on birthdays.  I’m turning 40 this year.  I thought about writing a “life review” and working with Jimmy Buffet’s “A Pirate Looks at 40” as a theme but honestly I didn’t get that far.  I don’t look 40 (quite).  I don’t feel 40.  At least, I don’t think I do.  I’m not sure what 40 is supposed to feel like. 

I HAVE noticed that 5:30 comes a little earlier lately but then, I’ve been staying up past midnight so I can blame that instead.  I also got a bit out of breath carrying a deer stand out of the woods last week but, on the good side, I was able to catch my breath while waiting for the 17 year old stud with the lighter load to catch up so  I guess I’m doing ok. 

The year has been good to me.  I went to Louisiana and back 7 times.  That was painful but the reasons for the trips were generally pretty good.  The trip is 950 miles one way or 1900 miles round trip.

We had a new niece join us.  One of my trips was to go and see her before she was born.  We(?) did one of those nifty 4D ultrasounds so Mrs. Jinksto and I drove over for that.  After her birth I drove over and saw her “for real”.  Fantastic.

My Nephew came and spent a couple of weeks with me over the summer.  That was the first time that he’s stayed with us for any length of time and we all had a blast.  It was so much fun in fact that he came back for Thanksgiving and I got to take him hunting.  Each of those visits required two round trips back home.  The Thanksgiving trip was hellish because I had to do the two round trips over the course of a week.   Completely worth it.  I’d do it again in a second.   In fact, he’s on tap to come back for a month or more next summer. Again Fantastic.

Nearly every weekend over the summer we had Rob and Tracey and the Hines family over either camping in the pool or here for a cookout of some kind.  Yet again Fantastic.

I switched to a new job that more closely matches the things that I love to do and stayed with my very cool employer while doing it.

I got to travel and spend a few days with Mark and then he drove over from Tennessee for a quick visit.  Yup, again, fantastic.

I celebrated another yearly event with my wife.  That one is actually more valuable to me than birthdays.  For an anniversary, not only does she have to avoid killing me for a year she has to put up with my crap and stick around.  I don’t know why she does either of those things but I’m glad she does.

So that’s a year in Jinksto land.  Between all of those “events” we see friends on a regular basis, enjoy the North Carolina outdoors or just sit and look out the window.

I still feel the same way about celebrating birthdays that I did last year and I still think that this bit sums it all up perfectly:

Dearest Ones,
Thank you for sharing my life and allowing me to share yours.  If I should die before I wake sometime in the next year be sure of this: I have lived and continue to live a full and complete life.  The things that I have done and still do make it full.  Your love makes it complete.  My life is full of things that I enjoy and I have more love in that life than any man has a right to expect. I spend time in God’s outdoors on a regular basis.  I do work that I love. I live in a fantastic place.  I have just enough money to struggle at doing most of the things that I like and, honestly, that makes those things that much sweeter.  The only thing that even comes close to making me sad is that I don’t get to see some of you  as often as I would like.  What, I ask you, could possibly be better than that?

Happy Birthday to me… dammit.

All my love,
jinksto

Happy Robert E. Lee Day!