35 Things I'm Grateful For On My 35th Birthday

Thirty-five years ago today, I was born with bright orange hair.  Why is this significant?  Well, about eight months before I popped out, my mother proclaimed that if she had a baby with red hair, she'd flush it down the toilet.  The mere fact I'm even alive should top my list of things I'm grateful for.  Being a Ginger is dangerous business.

So as a show of gratitude on my birthday a few years back, I sent my mother a dozen roses with a card that read:  Dear Mom, thanks for not flushing me.  Love, Kris.  Needless to say, she had a lot of explaining to do when the delivery guy dropped off the arrangement.  I guess one could surmise I've been fucking with her since day one.

Anyway, here it is - a list of 35 things I'm grateful for (in VERY particular order):

1. Being alive.
2. That I managed to make it through my twenties without contracting any life-threatening diseases. (Seriously, you all read my blog.  This is truly a feat within itself).
3. To that end, I'm grateful for my health.  And, might I add, that as a former smoker of thirteen years, my wrinkle situation could be so much worse than it is.
4. So I guess I'm also grateful I have a mother who insists wrinkle creams make the greatest birthday and Christmas presents.
   
5. And, while I'm at it, I'm pretty grateful for Botox, and the blissful ignorance that accompanies Science not having concluded any significant side-effects… yet.
6. My parents - although they didn't make the Top 5, their significance goes without mention.  I mean, I'm here, right?  You're welcome, world.  (I just made myself vomit.)
7. My brother.  Without him, A LOT more attention would have been paid to me. 
8. Twitter.  This piece-of-shit platform introduced me to my boyfriend.  No, that's not normal.  But then again, neither am I.
9. Vaccinations.  'Nuff said.
10. Therapists.  I've had a life, people.
11. Birthdays - because if they stop, I'm dead.
12. Sobriety.  Saving lives, relationships and genitalia since forever.
13. My extended family and the rich history that preceded them.  I'm related to some very questionable people, and I love them all.
14. Little earthquakes.  They really shake things up.
15. Friends that stick like glue, even after I disappear.  I have a tendency to fail at communication, and there's a few who remind me of this character defect frequently.
16. LOVE.  Broad, vague, ambiguous love. 
17. Vibrators.
18. My furry baby, Charlie.  
    
19. Alice in Wonderland, for stoking the embers of my imagination and creativity at such a young age.
20. That I am lucky enough to work in an industry I love, pursuing my spirit's passion. 
21. I'm a female living in a country that does not practice female circumcision.
22. My childhood - it was "normal" (for whatever that's worth).  Subsequently, I have no real excuse for my reckless behavior in my youth.
23. Accountability - Understanding what that really means has truly set me free.
24. I'm not starving.
25. I'm not homeless - although if I didn't have the supportive family I've been blessed with, I most certainly would have been homeless many times over.
26. For all my relatives, particularly Uncle Gumby, who opened their home to me and let me crash on their couch so I could chase my dreams.
27. Orthodontics.
28. Health Insurance.
29. A big shout out to the two Angels who reconnected me and my mother after she goddamn LOST me at Santa Anita Racetrack when I was two years old.  (She just kept trying to cut loose of the Ginger, but we ALWAYS come back.)
30. Facebook - as much as I hate to admit it.  I'm shit at keeping in touch, and this thing has really pulled through.
31. Rainbows - mainly for inspiring so many great YouTube videos and idiotic Tweets.
32. Unicorns - for their majesty and healing powers.
33. Grateful I learned to read good.
34. Beyond grateful I have codependent enablers for parents, who never have and never will give up on me.  
35. To have had the privilege of experiencing unconditional love, especially during times when I could not love myself.  
36. And for good measure - humor, laughter, jokes and irreverence - without which, I may not have a shot at a career.

Oh, and just in case you weren't sold on #18 :

Stop & Smell The Ridiculous

Here's what happens when I stop having fun and start taking myself too seriously: I miss all the good stuff.  Pretty obvious statement, I know; but I have an uncanny knack for getting wound up tighter than a noose - which I will quite frequently hang myself with.

The fact of the matter is there's so much fun stuff in life I miss when I get hung up (see what I just did?) on the small stuff, which is one of the reasons I think I drank in the first place.  It helped bevel the edges of my anxiety so I could chill out long enough to breath.  Invariably, I'd almost always overshoot the mark, but there was a window of coherence - usually between that second and fourth drink - where I could breathe and appreciate what I'd been too stressed to acknowledge in my habitual frenetic state of being.  I called these my "aaaaaaaaah" moments, and I coveted them.

Since I don't have alcoholic beverages as my life support system anymore, I have to find alternative ways to comprehend serenity, and it usually comes in the way of laughter.  They say laughter is the greatest medicine, and I'm inclined to agree.  Granted, I laugh at the most inappropriate things in the world, but that's probably because I don't know how to process feelings like a normal person.  I'm sure my Twitter feed is like a career condom, essentially preventing any sperm of talent from fertilizing the seed of advancement and birthing success.  But laughter is how I know peace.  It's light, it's fun, it keeps me alive - in the face of where I find my humor, I say this unapologeticly.  At the end of the day, it comes down to survival for me. 

Recently I've had my head too far up my ass with worry to notice anything, least of all anything funny.  Fear has put the blinders on.  Feelings of not being good enough have consumed me lately, and it's paralyzing.  I suffer from a disease of perception, and from time-to-time, it's hard for me to maintain perspective.  I know we all go through it - those crises of confidence that wear us down like rain on wooden shingles - but when I'm in the shit, it's practically impossible to get out of my head and see the bigger picture.  

Sure, this is my life, but there's a difference between being the center of my universe, and insisting I'm the center of The Universe.  We're all in this thing together, and I'm most understanding and empathetic to that idea when I can get out of myself long enough to notice ridiculous absurdities.  Sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes, and, fortunately for me, my brother just rolled into town, and he's like a truffle pig when it comes to unearthing life's little nuances.  Take, for example, the following:  

I chuckled to myself, and then continued about my business, when my phone buzzed with another text:

The text read:  Just walked by and did the polite thing - gave this nice old man the head nod.  Then I realized he was plastic.  Carpool dummy: 1, Brian 0

This pic jogged my memory, and I remembered stumbling across this car parked unsuspiciously in front of a grade school playground in my neighborhood.  (Not creepy at all…)

Playgrounds make me think of kids, and kids make me think of puppets:

Puppets make me think of the these two characters I met at a puppet show… they were not performers:

This is not Halloween.  This is a Tuesday night in Hollywood. 

Weirdos make me think of Hollywood, and Hollywood makes me think of this bad omen, painted on the sidewalk in front of my favorite Thai food restaurant:

Street Roaches

Sidewalks make me think of dead baby dolls...

And dead dolls make me think of decapitated dolls in truck beds:

Death makes me think of Mondays, and the napkin I found on the commissary floor at work:

Guns make me think of bullets, and bullets make me think of what was waiting for me at my desk upon returning from my lunch break at work the other day:

And work reminds me that we're all a bunch of squirrels trying to get a nut, but with a little luck, some of us might end up with a chocolate chip cookie.

After a tangent like that, I'm out of my head and laughing again, and, if not for but a moment, the world seems bearable.