Yesterday was my birthday.
I'm 56. I had to add it up from the year I was born. That's what happens when you're advanced in years or you just don't care. There are no milestones left so I've stopped counting. Last year I was finally old enough to live in an adult 55+ community, where you turn in the sounds of children and thumping bass teens for an HOA maven who leaves you a sticky note that says your garage door isn't allowed to be open between 10am and 2pm.
A few organized friends who use digital calendars remembered and of course the emails that pour in from a GMC dealership that has your birthday from your purchase 9 years ago or State Farm who says they miss you and want you back even though they canceled you back in 2011 after that roof claim pay out. Can we stop doing that as a form of marketing? It's really tone deaf and on top of the bad PR I can add disingenuousness to how I think of you.
I don't have any remaining living family. I'm still in the desert working with abandoned and now quite a few sick dogs in rural Mexico and how weird would it be if I went and told people it was my cumpleano and please wish it feliz for me. I'm not close with anyone here. I'm polite with a few. And that's not a celebratory vibe. The entire dog population including mine have Bordetella (kennel cough) and everyone is getting shots, which I loathe and am no good at.
Also, I hate forced fun. Holiday "season" and parties. If I'm not feeling something why am I celebrating? Seems inappropriate. Also, please shove the birthday cake emoji up your ass.
Overshadowed by the death of Violet, Cookie the dog has been refusing food and sick for a month. She ate for one day after getting a ton of expensive meds from the Saturday vet but she's just skin and bones walking around collapsing, vomiting, spasming and generally breaking my heart. She hides and when she shows back up she looks at me like, please. Make this stop. I asked that she be euthanized last week. The vet said (like any doctor would) to double up on her antibiotics and her anti-inflammatories . I oblige just because I'm buying time until next Saturday when he will come back out and hopefully put her to rest. She's a year old. I found her in a trash can. She was always under weight and a little sickly. A lot of times dogs that are orphaned at birth don't have strong immune systems because they aren't nursed. She is in pain and I hate it.
Many of my dogs were stray pups from unknown provenance. Last year in this town and others in Mexico, they were still doing genocide sweeps of the females with poison. Now apparently it's illegal with a new Mexican law. How progressive. Be sure to watch your step over the clandestine grave with human heads inside.
But before they got so heart shaped, most MX towns killed female dogs and many are nursing at the time and it leaves tons of puppies on the streets. I'm not sure why there is an inability to see the next phase of consequence in these backwards towns but remember even China got rid of all the girls a while ago and now they're crying about their population decline and lack of women.
So I spent yesterday researching and sitting with the poor dog and doing a LOT of laundry and stepping in a lot of clear slick barf. Maybe she has a blockage? Maybe she was poisoned (though she never goes out of the gates, she's pretty timid) maybe she has a tumor. But whatever it is, it's not going to get cured in my backyard and there's no clinic and no funds for transport, MRI and exploratory surgery and as harsh as it sounds, this is the kind of place where you kick the illness or die from it.
I had a stray cat I adopted in New Mexico once who had similar symptoms. After lots of imaging and diagnostics we got to the root of the issue with a kind vet. She had swallowed a button off a pillow on a sofa. $5000 worth of surgery later, she was back to eating and felt well enough to run away forever. She stayed in my same neighborhood but just picked a whole other (better) family. I admire cats. They don't care who feels bad about it. Nah, you're not for me. Bye.
I kept one of my restaurants open for 5 extra years because I couldn't bear to let the Mexican dishwasher and line cooks go. I'm schlepping around my mother's 20lb wedding album from 1947 because it was her prized possession and I can't just throw it into a Mexican trash can but she died in 2015. I don't even have a car to stow it in anymore. I'm not sure when I will cultivate a me first attitude but when it happens, then, I'll celebrate.