Happy birthday to me!!

My mom made me a chocolate bundt cake with real cream cheese frosting. I can scarcely wait!!!!1!!1!!!

I love my birthday! I love everything about it. It is "my day." (Of course I know that statistically many many people share my birthday. Two of my Facebook friends alone share the exact same day-out of only 161 people. Lots of sex happens in September, leading to June babies. This is just a fact of life.) My love for my birthday has absolutely nothing to do with receiving gifts, having people buy me drinks, or anything like that. It is just the day that I feel special, that is just...mine. I don't care if I'm a year older. Age means nothing to me. I don't usually ask off work for it, or anything; I see more people there than most anywhere else, and so more people can say to me, "Happy birthday!" If they don't, I remind them. Because hey. It just is: All day, all twenty-four hours of it. You can see I am up at 0056 thinking about it, still just as excited as when I was a little kid, when I would try to wait up until 0403 to watch myself in the mirror as I turned one year older (a failure, every year).

It's similar to, yet somehow different than, the way I feel about New Year's Eve, my other favorite holiday. Most people use that night as an excuse to revel themselves into oblivion (starting a beautiful brand new year off with a whopping hangover- which baffles me); I have my own ritual of re-reading my diaries and just being retrospective. It really takes the first week of the new year, the peaceful long-awaited post-holiday rest, to do this (how much I loathe Christmas is a whole other topic, and one that really doesn't interest you, I'm sure.)

I do love the de-stressifying post-holiday time, either snug on a futon in a warm blanket, or sitting in a quiet coffee shop, warm beverage in hand, reflecting on past fond memories and could-have-beens.

But birthdays are different for me, in the sense that the day itself is just the magic. It has no purpose except to be mine, all mine. No past, no future, no sadness about getting old, (who cares, my body is already falling apart); no Norman Rockwell expectations like Christmas has, no hookup expectations like New Year's Eve, - just sweet, honest, pure pleasure. Happy birthday to me!