Tomorrow, I’ll be forty-four years old. At the time, I almost didn’t make it.My tiny birth weight and one of the only early arrivals I’ve ever been able to pull off left outcomes in doubt, but I made it through but not without damage, in the form of a fairly significant mobility impairment. While I still love German chocolate cake on my birthday, and shake my head the way many a Gen Xer besides me does that we made it to this age, at times it can feel like a serious commemoration rather than a Song of Myself. It’s all been a fight, frankly. It was a fight to go to my neighborhood high school, it’s a fight to get my art out, it’s a fight to keep believing in my worth when all the “Makers and takers” crap raises its ugly head. The most tiring thing about the fight to protect Medicaid is that I’d hoped we were done, at least for this year. The market doesn’t care whether I get out of bed or not,even though in the coldest sense, it should, transfer payments get right back into the economy, albeit sometimes as a subscription to Daily Kos. We beat it back before and we will again. Happy birthday to me.