2 posts tagged “birthday”
"All these lines on my face gettin' clearer...."
So I've been 37 for about 5 days. Not a fan, really. Granted, it's not really anything different, i just hate being closer to 40. A few years back, I started taking a self portrait with each birthday. I probably should have thought ahead and make them all a straight-on shot, but oh well. Here we go:
33: This was in 2004. The Boston Red Sox would soon win the World Series, and I had a few months in of growin' my hair out again.
34: 2005. On this day, Mrs. Sully-to-be and I went to meet with someone about buying a house. No way in hell did I think it would work out. It did. We were pretty damn freaked out. A few days later, we started house hunting and checking out home builders. A month later, we decided (on the first place we visited). Then came six months of "oh-this-is-so-cool-we-can-afford-this-right?" over and over.
35: 2006. We'd been in the new house a little over six months at this time, I'd been working for T-mo for three, and married for 20 days. Lappy took this pic for me. Thanks, lappy!
36: Fucking horrible day. RIP Charlie, my girl. It's one thing to have to put a pet to sleep. It's another to have to do that on your own freekin' birthday. That week, I'd noticed that Charlie had been limping a bit, so I took her to get an xray on the 28th. A few hours later, I learned that she had bone cancer. I could have opted to amputate, but it had spread into her chest. There was no hope. The plan was to bring her home, and try to spend as much time with her through the weekend, and bring her to the vet on Monday and put her to sleep. She had a cast on her leg to keep it from breaking, and we tried as best as we could to have a quiet weekend with her. She was pretty doped up and didn't really move from one of her beds in the living room. Charlie slept in our room, but since she didn't really want to get off of her bed, I decided to bring a mattress into the living room, and I put it next to her, and I tried to sleep. Of course, I woke up whenever I heard her collar jingle, but I was with her. The next morning (the 29th), it was clear that she was ready to go. I called the vet, and brought her at 2pm. It was easily one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I held her and told her what a good girl she was, and that I loved her very, very much. Even a year later, it's damn near devastating to relive.
I had planned to scatter her ashes in the baseball field that she and I would play in (before we moved down to Texas), but when the time came, I couldn't do it. It's still too hard.
Anyway, Lappy took this one before I broke down completely.
...and 37: Lappy took the first one. Sadly, there was a lot of light, and when that happens, lappy tends to take grainy pictures. Thankfully, Photoshop came to the rescue. The second pic was taken with my point-and-shoot. I messed with it a bit in PS as well. I kinda like it.
sixteen years ago this morning, i stood in a hallway in cedars-sinai hospital in beverly hills until it was time for me to enter the operating room (his was a scheduled c-section delivery). i was so sure that i was going to have a son the entire pregnancy, but all of a sudden, a thought hit me; what if it's a girl? more appropriately, what if it was a girl, and i'd spent 9 months mentally planning for a son? how uncool would that be to this little girl if i hesitated for just a moment at her birth and thought "oh! ...it's a girl!" i instantly snapped to it and got very excited over the prospect of a daughter. yes, i was going to have a daughter named scarlett (long before ms. johansen begun her movie career), and i couldn't wait.
i stood in the hall, looking out the window at the los angeles hard rock cafe, where there was a sign on the building that read "world population now" and it had numbers running up by the second. i thought that was kinda neat and it was something i oddly felt a part of. yeah, i know, it's a little odd; i was twenty, for god's sake. the fact that i was still alive after what i've done to myself was a miracle in itself.
anyone who knows me knows that i have a son, who is 16 years old today. this has been the first birthday of his that has really hit me from a wonderment kind of angle. i know that i didn't go through as much reflection at his 1st, 5th, 10th birthdays. perhaps it's because i remember his age so well. i wonder if 16 year old sully and he would have been friends. i think if anything, i'd be contributing to his delinquency. :)
he and i have been through a lot together, and i couldn't be prouder of him. he's a well mannered boy who's kind to others, has a good sense of humor, and is a pretty smart kid (he may be graduating HS a year early). yeah, there have been ups and downs, but there have been way more good times than bad. i'm a very fortunate person, to say the least.
