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Despite spending the entire weekend indoors, trying to rest, and Max's very strong proclamations that one cannot be sick on their birthday, I am indeed still sick. On my birthday.

I know how colds go for me, and I'm on the upswing now, as the cold is mainly in my chest now. I no longer feel like I'm running a fever (which for me is anything about 99 degrees), and I no longer feel like I was punched in the sinuses. So, progress. But it'll likely be weeks before my cough totally goes away.

My parent's dog Ginger passed away last week, and while I was looking back at old pictures to find some of her, I was struck instead by pictures of myself. I was shocked to see how good I looked, posed with Marc before attending a fancy company event, or just playing with infant Hannah on the old rug in her room. If you'd asked me then, I wouldn't have said I looked particularly good. It's a curse, that we don't know how good something is when we have it. But I was also videotaped for a training at work last week, and so I saw myself, granted, not dressed up for a swanky event, but still having made an effort, and oof. I look so tired.

I'd joked that morning that I was my own version of hungover, which includes no alcohol, but having done too many things and having stayed up too late. So, yes, I was tired.

And I know that most of the people I surround myself with at this point are older than me, so a constant theme in my life is hearing that I'm so young, that I'm just a baby still. So it surprised me to see that it's really true. I look a lot older than I did then.

Just before my birthday, October 2004

The upside to all of this? The little baby in that picture has also gotten older, and she's utterly fabulous. The baby I couldn't even picture at that point is counting the days until he turns seven. And the other family and friends who also look 10 years younger in those pictures I found? They're still by my side. Along with a lot of great new people, too.

Yes, I'm sick, and I'm very tired, but I'm still incredibly lucky. I need to recommit to solving the sleeping piece, and probably the exercise piece too, but if a birthday isn't when you take stock of things like that, then I don't know what is. Thirty-six was the year I took my family to Israel and the year I produced a show, the realization of a more-than-decade long held goal, and a goal I never knew I had.

It is worth it, this growing older and looking older. That girl with the windswept hair above? She had no idea of all the good things still to come.