2004-12-18 � birthday

Happy Birthday to Me

So here's the deal... tommorrow is my birthday. I will be a million years old. Thankfully, I still look significantly younger than my chronological age although not nearly as young as my mental age which is approximately as pictured below. Sadly (appropriately?!), I no longer fit into the angel outfit.

It's a troublesome thing now, this December birthday. It's not enough that my birthday celebrations (such as they are) are overshadowed by the frenzy that is Christmas. No. It must also bump up against the New Year and be planted firmly in PMS territory too. And I've got to tell you, the timing of this is all conspiring to give me a very large headache. All these thoughts swirling in my merry-go-round brain. What did I accomplish this year? Where am I heading? I'm how old?!! Egad. That can't be right!!! Wait! No! That simply can't be true! I still don't have proper adult furniture (read: furniture not available at IKEA)! I don't have a daily mositurizing ritual down! I've never filled out my own tax return! Stop!!! I'm not prepared!


It didn't use to be this way. I once thought being a Christmas baby was a splendid thing to be. I thought the whole season was about me, me, me! The lights, the trees, the carols, the animation specials on tee vee, santa and his sack full of presents... all in celebration of wee me.

The illusion was further heightened by the story (told over and over again at my insistence) that I came home from the hospital swathed in a giant stocking with my name embroidered on it and the fact that I can scarcely find a birthday picture of me that does not picture me beaming awkwardly in front of a fesitive and frequently flocked Christmas tree. I even thought that the religious aspect of Christmas � the babe in the manger in all those nativity scenes � was all about me and my birthday. Until I was four, I thought that the Christ child was there to represent me and my birth and children all over the world were forced to re-enact my arrival in church basements and shepard gear. I was crushed to pieces to learn that the babe was, in fact, a boy with all the (we can assume) requisite boy bits ( they kinda glossed over that part in Sunday School). It made sense, sure. I mean, I really couldn't recall being visited by three wisemen or ever living in Bethlehem and my mother's name is Sonya, not Mary... but I was crushed all the same.

This birthday seems to be hanging on me more heavily than any other birthday I can recall aside from my 25th birthday when I flipped out completely at work when the realization dawned that I was sliding rapidly toward thirty and found myself under my desk in the newsroom (I was working as a reporter at the time), cradling my phone and sobbing incoherently to my Dad who was trying desperately to ascertain who had died or which of my limbs had been severed from my body because In all the 25 years previous? I had maybe called my dad at work four times, and mostly that was to remind him that I had been waiting outside for over an hour for him to come get me from figure skating practice. Oddly, I barely even noticed turning 30. I guess I had already dispensed with the horror.

But this one... hmm. It's thrown me a bit. Once again, it's not a significant birthday like forty. Nope. Still got a couple of years before I mark that one. But I feel... I feel... I feel kinda, I dunno, lost with this one. I'm not sure what it was I was suppose to have achieved by now, I'm not sure what it is that I want to achieve by this time next year. I feel somehow changed and like something is remarkably transformed in me, but Be damned if I can figure out just what. It's a conundrum, I tell ya.

But fortunately it's a condundrum which comes with cake.


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