Ruminations on the number '42'

42... Douglas Adams had it pegged as the answer to 'life, the universe, EVERYTHING'. So I'm taking that as my cue for this next year. I would rather that than 'The world is my oyster'... My mother once described oysters as 'black snot balls', years and years and years ago. I have had oysters. I don't like oysters. My mother's voice in my head has taken care of that.
I've had the day off work, and I spent it in the kitchen, and on the couch (watching tv randomly). In the kitchen making my (now) annual Lemon Meringue Pie. I still don't like birthday cake. Cloying, over-sweet icing made with shortening... Or I can have an all-butter crust with homemade Meyer lemon curd topped with meringue whipped up in my handy-dandy KitchenAid.
I'll have pie, please.
I feel very blessed. Not by 'God/dess' or anything, just... by the universe. I have made it through. I am no longer, not by a long shot, a child. I survived. Given the fact that humans are quite fragile in their own right, and I haven't exactly had it super-duper easy (not that I've had to work in a mine or anything, but the emotional abuse over the years?) Pssshhht... Bring it on. I survived. I have family I love, I have a painted man who still makes me blush and stammer like a schoolgirl, lovers I hold in my heart and in my head and in my hands. I love my friends, and I have no real enemies. I have people I don't like-just flat out don't like and will go out of my way to avoid, and I have people who are attracted to me, but I'm not attracted to them. Not in a sexual way, in a friendship way. Those people, they're outside my sphere.
I have others I'd like in my sphere, but they dance about the edge, just that infinitesimal amount of inaccessible. Such is life on this pale blue dot, and still we want.
I want.
And the next 42 years?
Bring 'em on!