Last year, this point in time marked the end of February. This year, this point in time marks the beginning of March. A leapless year has left us a day shorter than the last. I grew so accustomed to those 366 days last year, I don’t know how I’ll cope with a mere 365 this go around. I had some chores on my to-do list that I estimated would require 366 days to adequately complete that will have to be put off until 2020.

The lady that waxes my back will understand, and possibly rejoice a bit, if she’s into rejoicing, can’t say I know her that well. She seems exhausted and a bit nauseous when she’s done so pleasantries don’t seem in order. Besides, between now and 2020, that hairs not going anywhere, besides further down my back. That make anyone gag? I assume I would have, but seeing how my backs behind me, I’ve been spared from the horror of it all.

It seems like a silly place for hair nowadays, but 30,000 years ago when thumbing through Montgomery Ward wasn’t an option but thumbing a ride on a glacier was, we would have changed our tune. Evolution is a lovely thing. I’d talk more about it, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise for those that are still working at it.

Speaking of evolution, curiosity got the best of me last year and I ordered a DNA test kit from National Geographic to get a better idea of what tree my ancestors fell out of. For the price of a relatively new helmet, in case you fall out of a relatively tall tree, I received a kit that would tell me who I was…relatively.

When the kit arrived I excitedly opened it, and found two cheek swabs and two vials to put each of the cheek swabbing’s into. As evolutionary luck would have it, I have two cheeks, and thus began swabbing. When the results came back indicating that I was a genetic match to an ancient family of dung beetles whose lineage had thought to have gone extinct during the great dung famine of the late Paleolithic era I realized I had swabbed the wrong cheeks.

The second DNA cheek swabbing, acquired with much less sweat and tears than the first, revealed that I was most definitely mostly Homo sapien. By “mostly” I mean about 98% of my person is Homo sapien, and the other 2% is Homo neanderthalensis. My sister’s response to the breaking news that I was 2% Neanderthal was, “I beg to differ.” I believe the percentage is variable, and rises in direct correlation with the percentage of rum my sister has forced upon me in an attempt to make our time together more tolerable.

My dear old dad decided to give the DNA fun a go as well, and see if a swabbing would reveal any ancestral ghosts lurking in the shadows of his genome, or possibly attempt to prove he wasn’t my father so he could stop crying himself to sleep every night. I probably shouldn’t publicly divulge such sensitive genetic information, but dad’s results said he was 4% Neanderthal. I immediately looked at my mother and thanked her for evolving her children 2% closer to being fully human. As the song goes, “Momma tried…”

There’s a lovely lady, who I’m quite proud to be of the same lineage, celebrating her birthday today. I don’t know what her genetic percentages are, but she tolerated us Neanderthals for many years, and managed to always be nothing less than 100% loving and caring. Happy Birthday Grandma Rose.