I saw one of those reality shows recently that my daughter likes. What Would You Do? And it was a show where a couple fought publicly with a young girl who had supposedly promised a baby that she was now deciding to keep.

They showed the scenario many different ways, with the pregnant girl left, or the adoptive husband or the adoptive wife. In one scenario, the adoptive wife was left, and two women came out of nowhere in this restaurant and prayed with her, an actress who wasn't actually looking for a baby in real life at all. The actress was still moved to tears because the strangers prayed that she might be blessed with a baby, a baby she hadn't ever really considered in her life at all.

I have people in my life right now who are having a hard time with health. People for whom I just wish peace, for whom I wish safe passage. I keep thinking about those two complete strangers who came out of nowhere and prayed. I am told when my grandfather lay dying on the side of the road, a woman appeared and held his hand and told him it was okay to go. A stranger.

I thank you, stranger. That I might be so blessed.

There are two individuals on opposite sides of my family now who are having a hard time. I wish them a safe and painless passage.

Tonight my daughter and I watched a show in which a family had to decide to put their dog down, as we have put so many cats down. And my daughter asked how that would go, and I explained euthanasia.

If only my own passing could be so easy, I said.

She nodded from her nest on the couch. Perhaps I shouldn't bring up such subjects with a nine-year-old, but she has experienced the loss of many pets now, and truly, I think we dread death more than we should. Life is a circle. It should be, and it is. I think there is more than this that we see right now. I don't know what it is, but I believe there is more. I believe that it can be beautiful.

I remember a line from one of my favorite movies, LADY JANE, in which she says: The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible. At there arriving, she is assured of bliss, and forever dwells in paradise.

I believe that. That we are assured of bliss.

I wish bliss for my family.

I wish bliss for my family.

Because I do believe that the soul takes flight, and there arriving, we are assured of bliss. I wish that for all of you.

Not totally. Not really. Because today, I made it to forty. And my daughter made me toast on the red plate and sang to me. And my friends called and texted and joked and welcomed me to this decade of my life. And my sister and my best friend sang to me on the phone. And even though Beloved is out of town, I opened my presents via Facetime.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way.

1) No matter how much you want to embrace 40, it's 40. It's like 30's older sister. These birthdays that end in zeroes are tough.

2) Polar vortex

3) School has been cancelled all week, see: polar vortex. It's also cancelled tomorrow because we got a foot of snow in a blizzard yesterday and the salt is apparently not activating because blah blah SCIENCE so all the roads still suck even though they've been treated and plowed.

4) Both my child and my cat have been cooped up in this house since the Super Bowl and are ready to kill each other.

5) My daughter keeps making cookies. We have a million cookies. She keeps making more. And leaving the dishes.

6) The blizzard required a total of three hours over two days of snowblowing, because: polar vortex.

7) My husband is traveling for six weeks solid Monday-Thursday. This was week one.

8) I kind of hurt my back snowblowing. I think it's okay, but I'm not completely sure, because I'm old now.

So my sister called me as I was skating around town buying prescription cat food and hand warmers and cat toys and champagne in tiny little bottles to reward myself for making it through this week of frigid hell. I tried to tell her paragraph one, about how I know I should be grateful and in a better mood and all because all my limbs are attached and at least I work from home, and she was all: You know what? I think it's already too late. BIRTHDAYFAIL. 

And then for the first time today, I sort of felt better for real. 

Kizzy is okay. For now. For today, we are the windshield. I wrote a very long post about what was wrong with him today on BlogHer, if you're interested. 

The little black cat is in the kitty hospital recovering from a blocked urethra. It could've killed him if it went untreated. It hasn't even been a year since we lost Sir Charles Buttonsworth. I really need Kizzy to be okay.

Send good juju.

Don't feel sorry for her, but my daughter is bored.

And I get it. I'm not a fan if the time between when school gets out and when it starts up again. It'd frickin' freezing outside, but there's usually not enough snow for sledding. Everyone's broke from Christmas and done with crowds. Redbox stands in the grocery store, sucked dry down to The Hangover 2.

It's boring.

So today we went through her art projects from 2013, dividing them between grandparents and my sister, boxing them up and sealing them with leftover Halloween duct tape. This activity reminded me of being bored when I was a kid, cranking the top 100 countdown of 1987 and digging through old jewelry boxes and treasure chests, looking at my stuff. Reading old bad poems. Thinking about life.

We talked about the good old days in second grade, and I was again struck, looking at the school pictures from the past, at how grown-up she really does seem now.

Maybe the end-of-year, walls-closing-in school break is important in order to make us appreciate weekday coffee and a full to-do list. A school bus full of friends, their wrists full of Rainbow Loom bracelets. A new calendar, a new semester.

Every day is, in fact, a new chance. But it feels newer right now. Being bored in a way is being present when there's no crisis going on.

I found my class ring. Apparently we can learn from this when I graduated, what my school colors were, that I was a cheerleader and into academics. Not much about who I WAS in high school.

I felt a lot of feelings this week. I'm on the cusp of 40, I had a novel out this year for the first time, my daughter is suddenly looking 15 instead of nine, I started training in July for a half-marathon next April and have had subsequent body changes, my colitis finally got diagnosed, I had a lump in my breast that turned out to be harmless, my husband is a full year distanced from unemployment. These are all good things, but this week I've cried more than I did all year, and whether they are tears of fear or relief -- I can't tell. My husband says I have a chronic case of What Have You Done for Me Lately with my accomplishments. He's right. I've already started trying to deflect that with the little angel by trying not to describe her to people by what activity she's in. My parents didn't do that to me, but I've always had trouble not measuring myself against some nonexistent doorframe where the marks are just lines to everyone but me. I'm always checking to see if I've grown, and I'm devastated if I haven't.

I am not what I do. I am who I am. Why am I still having so much trouble with that truth?

I remember looking around at older women at my first few jobs (and back then, "older" meant "above 30" and wondering why they got so bedazzled for work.

I also remember doing some work with a high-end useless pretty things shop in Kansas City. I was in the shop when a woman came in and ordered hundreds of dollars in soon-to-die centerpieces, and my twentysomething self threw up in her mouth. Of course, at the time, I lived in a first-floor one-bedroom that butted up to an abandoned building/crackhouse, so seasonal color was sort of lost on me.

My daughter has been making fun of me lately because of my obsession with my pumpkin cairn. At the patch, I bought 89 pounds of unusual, low, flat and red, green and orange pumpkins, and I stacked them outside my door. My husband thought I'd gone Pinterest. My daughter thought I needed to get over myself. I was starting to grok the value of seasonal color. Once you get to paint your own walls whatever color you want, pumpkins get to be interesting little fuckers.

It has been a slow change. I now understand why I'd want to iron clothes on a weekday, even though I work from home. And I understand when you get older -- and in my case, are tied at home a lot by a child -- the need for home to be more interesting grows. When I was twentysomething, I was hardly ever home. Now the money I used to spend on cabs and cover goes to cat litter and CVS. That pumpkin cairn greets me every time I drive up.

I get those little old ladies now buying flower arrangements for their foyer tables.

The world outside is yellow. The trees in my yard and across the street turn anywhere from dull brown to bright  yellow in the fall, depending on how much rain we've had during the summer. This year they're macaroni-and-cheese yellow. 

We peered up at the trees last weekend, commenting on how odd it was they hadn't turned yet. It happens so fast. They turned and began falling a few days ago, and now my deck is carpeted in sunshine even as it the sky is gray and rainy. 

It reminds me of "All Summer in a Day," a little, knowing how quickly this beauty will explode and then fade into another winter.

Something happens when your husband has a week-long business trip the same week that your boss is on vacation. That thing is called NOT BLOGGING. 

More next week!