When Everything's a Line

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," voracious voluptuous vulture-viewing since 1974! If you find vultures offensive, you are on the wrong website. Go to the canary page, if that's how you roll.

Where I live, the seasons change. The Earth goes through a great Wheel, year after year. This time we had no winter, but all the same, the spring flowers are coming out, and they are a welcome splash of color on the drab landscape.

I like to think of life as circular, like a farmer looks at growing seasons and harvest seasons and planning seasons. However, there's at least one day a year when that circularity becomes challenged: on one's birthday.

We celebrate the anniversary of our births in this culture. It's a big deal. Awhile back, I went to a big party for Mr. J's grandmother when she turned 90. Still eating cake and opening gifts at age 90!

There's a whole industry that thrives almost completely on birthdays. Little kids love birthday parties, both their own and others'. My daughter The Spare has engineered some whoppers over the past decade, and her efforts were rewarded with a splendid Sweet Sixteen that cost us next to nothing.

Spare will be 18 next month, and already her affection for birthdays is lagging. No bigI plans this time. She's just keen to get a voter registration application. Another blue voter for the ages!

I'm not keen for birthdays at all. Today is mine. I've had many. I don't like tacking a higher number to my age. I don't like being reminded that I'm mortal ... well, not exactly that I'm mortal, but that the challenges of old age are inching ever closer. I'm a pretty youthful fifty-something, but I've got a titanium hip that has a clock of its own. Nothing about me is as energetic as it used to be.

Well, with age comes wisdom. At least that is true. No one is ever too old to learn something or to be challenged by novelty. Just take this blog, for instance. When my only way to write was a pen and paper, I couldn't keep a diary to save my life. Now, "The Gods Are Bored" is almost to its 7th birthday!

You know the other thing about birthdays? When you've had 50 or more, they aren't very special anymore. There's laundry and housework to be done. Cat chores.

I don't mean to sound so blue. Actually I am starting a whole new course of study today. And it could be worse. Thanks to a Yahoo article, I calculated the ages of my felines. Alpha is 84, and Beta is 68. Time is a line for them, too.