Cat Stevens

Ultimately, that's why I'm out of bed right now. I woke up around 4 AM, and stayed in bed for awhile. Because that's a reasonable thing to do at 4 AM. I figured I'd fall back asleep. But Cat Stevens was singing so loudly in my head - I knew there was no sleep in my near future.

So I might as well blog.

Yesterday was my birthday and I had a wonderfully full house of people , over a span of about twelve hours (well, two are still here), here helping me celebrate my birthday and warm this new home.

My favorite part was getting so many people from different parts of my life together in one house. I've never done that to this degree before. I was a tiny bit nervous about it before hand. But it was great. And, you know, that's what this blog is all about. I used the phrase "a little more fluid" in an email to Tyka saying something like, "I'm working on being more flexible and accepting of change lately, allowing my life to be a little more fluid." She suggested I use it as the title of my then about to be born blog. To that I would add that I'm moving towards increasing fluidity between people I know from different arenas. Because it makes me so happy.

So, my real favorite part was getting people in the same room who I know from the same place and same era and who I have stayed in contact with but who haven't seen each other in ten plus years. Like my childhood friend A who I used to play Laura and Mary with, and my sister and M who was basically a sibling. It was hard to choose a picture of the day because there are many great ones. But I think this might be my favorite.

It was also cool, although I didn't point it out to anyone (I just enjoyed it alone in my head) to have my friend A who I used to play Laura and Mary with when I was seven here at the same time as my other friend A who is seven now who I've been reading Little House in the Big Woods with these recent weeks. Circles. They keep going.

It was neat to have friends from high school and friends from college (Lewis & Clark) here together. And earlier to have friends who I'm currently in school with (Saint Martin's) here as well.

I'm getting a little worried. It's 5:22 now... and I think I may have missed the go-back-to-bed-and-get-some-more-sleep phase in this whole crazy being awake in the middle of the night thing. That's bad. Because I was up fairly late. And couldn't have gotten more than 217 minutes of sleep. And that's really not enough.

It was neat to have four (counting me) people who were present at my birth present celebrating it all these years later.