Happy Birthday to Me!

Bleeding Heart

Today is my 53rd birthday. So I am going to do a combination post. Ten things I want you to know about me. Ten songs that my iPod could play for me everyday. The ten things my cells are doing to me as I age.

1. I am a twin, so it is my brother's birthday today too.
2. I went to Woodstock with all of my siblings.
3. In the 1970s I built two cabins with my partners, using only hand tools (no electricity). One cabin is in southern Oregon, the other is just outside of Garberville in Humboldt County California.
4. I ride an electric bicycle, and used one to commute to work for many years.
5. I chauffeured Abbie Hoffman at the Kerouac Conference 1982.
6. I did a summer poetry apprenticeship with Allen Ginsberg 1982.
7. I am 5'2", weigh 110 pounds, but friends always tell me I take up a lot of space.
8. Most people think I look like I am from India.
9. I have not eaten beef in 35 years.
10. I am a survivor of a violent sexual assault by a stranger in 1970.

My music

1. In My Life - The Beatles
2. Slow Surprises - Chris Smithers
3. Life in the Country - City Folk
4. Rexroth's Daughter - Greg Brown
5. Find the Cost of Freedom - Crosby, Stills, and Nash
6. Keep Me In Your Heart -- Warren Zevon
7. Fare Thee Well -- Fred Neil
8. Water Song - Hot Tuna
9. The Dawntreader-- Joni Mitchell
10. Anything by Martin Simpson

My cells:

1. My hair is almost entirely grey.
2. My skin is smooth and almost entirely unwrinkled, surprising given the amount of time I have spent in the sun
3. I am shrinking. Pretty soon, I'll have to stand on tiptoe to reach my full 5'2".
4. I started wearing reading glasses eight years ago, and distance glasses four years ago. I now have progressive lens on my single pair of glasses.
5. I have a hearing loss in my right ear (from an old swimming injury), which seems to be getting progressively worse.
6. I have been diagnosed with osteopenia-- which means my bones are pretty thin, except that I am a small-boned person, and it is likely that they reached this full level of thinness when I was young, and is not a sign of osteoporosis (the jury is out on this one).
7. It takes much longer for body injuries to heal, a torn ligament in my back took nearly a year two years ago.
8. Memory loss-- in mid sentence, quite often I can not remember all the words I want to use (probably a result of lower estrogen levels).
9. Why I am doing this list? I can't remember.
10. Oh yeah, my cells are aging-- you can read all about it in newscientist.com