I am a numbers person. I believe I have mentioned before that I am also superstitious. Something that those who know and love me either identify with or make fun of me for. Interestingly, as I was outlining this blog post a good friend (shout out to Pammie, YOOOOO) called me to tell me all about her recent bout with the flu that involved a high fever. The fever induced delirium included her wanting to verbalize a list of numbers that made sense to her but no one else. She was convinced that I would have understood the numbers. I am inclined to concur because I have a running list of numbers in my head all the time. This has little to do with my position in accounting and everything to do with my station in life. I add up license plate numbers, birthdays (Fact: OC birthday is 02-20-2002 and Jared’s is 01-02-2001, two fantastically cool birthdays, both in my family!! SWOON!), dates of importance such as weddings, funerals, death dates, clean dates, relapse dates and on and on. For some reason I believe these dates are all cosmically related. Example? Sure. My birthdate (08-28-1975) when added together as individually is 40 (0+8+2+8 etc) which is the age I was when I married AC. Divided by 2 is 20, divided by 2 is 10, divided by 2 is 5. A prime number! Love. AC’s birthday (I can’t give without his permission and right now he is cooking and you can’t talk to him when he is cooking or he get’s very agitated) add’s up to 30, the age he was when he had SC, divided by 2 is 15, divided by 3 is……. 5!! Same as me. There is a bit of manipulation but that’s what I do. I sit and add numbers and divide them, and multiple them, and subtract them until I feel comfortable with them. Stop… I know how insane this sounds, and this is going somewhere, I promise.

When a number jumps out at me, or I see it over and over, I recognize it. The other day I was at a red light when I noticed the car in front of me had the license plate 7777 MB. I shit you not. A few minutes later I stopped at Dunkin Donuts and the total came to $7.77. Later the same day I was not able to reconcile one of my bank accounts. It was off $777.31. At this point, I recognized that the number 7 was coming up to many times to be a coincidence. So I googled it. And I was surprised to find out that there is something behind all this number business. There is a thing called an Angel number. An Angel number is a number associated with good luck, optimism, good fortune.  It can represent a miracle. Well, damn! I need a miracle! It is a miracle when I manage to get through the day without giving someone an ass-punch! According to the first site I read, it was a sign that now was the time for things to go in the right directions, fulfill my dreams. The second site I read from said that it was a magical number meant to reassure me that my guardian angels are looking over me. And, like, no shade but I wouldn’t be at all upset if my guardian angels want to reach out to the Long Island Medium and have her give me a ring. I mean, I wouldn’t be hating on that one bit. I appreciate the 7’s and all, but listen, a girl wants to meet her some Theresa Caputo!

But my favorite was the last site I read. It had a breakdown of 7, 77, 777. It broke them down, added them up (77=5, hello AC and me <3) and then broke them down again. What I learned from all this is something positive. Something is changing or could be changing in a positive way. I would love that. I would love that something would be moving in a different direction. Sometimes you have to crawl through the shit storm to get to the garden of roses, so I am hoping that I am at the tail end of the storm.  All in all, things aren’t that bad. They could be worse.  JoDee has been home, doing well, I can’t complain there. I also know that things change in a split second. I could wake up tomorrow and she might be gone. Who knows… I might wake up dead, too. Side note: if that happens I am going to find the Long Island Medium and not leave her alone until she communicates with my loved ones.

All of these 7’s got me thinking about Jared. Jared was born at 7:17pm and he weighed 7.75 lbs. There was 7 years between JoDee and Jared. And all those 7’s were a sign of a change. I became a single mother shortly thereafter, which began a year of change. Selling my house, moving, starting a new job, figuring out my new normal. Those were very difficult things but some of the best years of my life, so far, have been those times that four of us were together. We may have been broke but we enjoyed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the beach for dinner, and camping out in our own backyard when we couldn’t afford to go away. The sign that things are changing is welcomed, for us. This, the first year of my married life with AC, formally blending our families, has been really tough actually. Not because of AC or me but because we have both had children in crisis, one of more traveled to Europe for a backpacking trip alone, taking care of my very elderly and feisty grandmother, just to name a few. I think I speak for all 7 of us (is that ironic, I think not) when I say that we are ready and waiting for a positive change. We are waiting to embrace it.  I just hope that it really is positive…..the alternative would really suck. Until things really do calm down and level out, I treated myself to a permanent reminder to breathe….