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Carefree highway, let me slip away on you
Carefree highway, you seen better days
The morning after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away, slip away on you

“Carefree Highway” — Gordon Lightfoot

I’m sure my dear readers and friends have wondered where in the world I’ve been all day long! This is the day I generally avoid social media like the plague because I want to make sure this post is written before I see all of the kind wishes and thoughts that I know are sitting out there with that double-digit red number in the corner of one particular social media icon.

So I do apologise for any inconvenience this may cause but know that each and every one of you is a cherished part of my life whether our time together has been brief or you’ve had to put up with me and my quirks for the long haul! I really have no desire to know what my world would be like without you dear friends and family in it.

Anyway, for the past week or so, I’ve been wondering what the “hook” to the annual birthday post would be.

To be sure, there’s been more than a few distractions like the Traverse’s coolant temperature sensor experiencing a fault that made things very interesting round here. If I’m brutally honest, the sounds the engine made when the sensor darned near failed completely in a Lowe’s car park just seemed to be par for the course for this past year.

Sometimes it truly is hard to remember that when one is up to their ass in alligators that the original objective was to drain the swamp.

Between all of the automotive excitement and all of the other joys of running all over the place just trying desperately to get everyone and everything where it needs to be when they need to be there (the primary mantra of those of us who understand what a logistics MOS (military occupational specialty) of 90A truly entails!)…it can sometimes be difficult to step back and take a breath and appreciate what was really accomplished.

That’d be why a random tweet by Chuck Kaiton (legendary radio broadcaster for the Hartford Whalers who followed the team to North Carolina) where he was mentioning that “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” was his favourite Gordon Lightfoot tune led to me having a bit of the “road to Damascus” moment where the “hook” became crystal clear.

The second track I’d sing with Gordon after the “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” when it was time to go walkabout which would be “Carefree Highway”.

Now the thing that I call living is just being satisfied
With knowing I got no one left to blame

“Carefree Highway” — Gordon Lightfoot

Goodness knows that the past year hasn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination. There have been (and still are) challenges to deal with in the daily struggle just to survive and keep a roof over one’s head.

Those challenges alone would be enough to wonder if I’d really see something to help light the way whilst shuffling from one place to another.

And it’d be easy enough to miss that even in the midst of many things I might wish to be different, there was plenty in the past year to find some measure of happiness.

Along the way, I found a potential new calling about as different from my previous life as an IT weenie but ironically enough potentially even more nerdy whilst helping a dear friend who is as much family to me as those born to it with all of the boring and mundane tasks of incorporating and minding the books so he can concentrate on his true passion of making someone’s dreams for their home a reality. Most new corporations don’t even make it to the first anniversary but I’ve a strong feeling this one’s going to go the distance.

I’ve found that I actually enjoy helping people make the best (and occasionally survive the nastier aspects of!) an incredibly complicated tax code, so much so that the goal for this year is to study for and sit the three Special Enrollment Examinations to be commissioned a Enrolled Agent by the IRS so that I can continue to help those who aren’t tax wonks or have no desire to have an intimate knowledge of the Internal Revenue Code (OK, it’s better than Sominex…try reading some of it the next time you’re awake at 0300!).

Some of the best gifts are the feeling of knowing that the needs of others have been attended to.

I exist to serve…I always have and will be happiest when I can continue to do so.

But then there’s the best gifts I’ve ever had and ever will have and that’s my three children who mean more to me than all of the money in the Two Worlds or some physical item ever will.

I know full well they’ll never believe or actually listen to me when I tell them that all I truly need on this particular day at this time in my life is a big hug and their love and I’ll be perfectly happy and thrilled with just that.

But it won’t stop me trying to just have that big hug and the certainty of knowing that they’ve loved and accepted me all along for who and what I am, even the less-than-stellar bits. That is a profoundly powerful gift that is well beyond the capacity of mere words to express just how much joy that brings to my soul.

That is why that even though I will cherish the good vibes and kind wishes for a happy birthday and for the year to come from all those dear friends and family, my favourite gift will be having all three of the kids here at The Nerdery tonight (OK, I’ll admit that Mistletoe and Mocha are quite the tail-wagging bonus!).

These nights when they’re all here under this roof are the nights that I can truly relax and have a restful sleep knowing that for at least tonight that my universe is complete and those kids who have had such an indelible stranglehold on my heart for all these years are safely nearby hopefully having sweet and wonderful dreams of their own before the madness starts anew when the morning comes.

These are the nights that I have truly found my way home from walking along Carefree Highway.

These are the nights I truly cherish and always will.

So thank you to all who have made this birthday a wonderful day and may the year to come be a bit less exciting for us all! 🙂