The Birthday Curse

You all know how I feel about birthdays. Mine and other peoples. I love them all equally. Birthdays cause me to turn into a gushy mess of Yay-For-You. That's just how I roll.

When I was in high school, my friends and I would call a birthday by your name, followed by the word "fest." As in LutherFest. Or NatashaFest. Or PrudenceFest. It was a Friggin' FEST. And all day long, we would fest it up. Usually, this would start with a 5am trip to McDonald's or Big Boy for breakfast (or Bob Evans if we were feeling extra kitschy) before school. Who cares if we were teenagers and had only slept three hours the night before? We were going to get up at the crack of ass and go start the Fest! (Please don't point out the sad fact that we were woo-hooing ourselves all the way to
motherhumping Big Boy. I know it sounds sad and pathetic now, but trust me. It was good times). Then we would pile back in the car and go to school, and all day it was birthday birthday birthday. In choir, which was almost 100 kids large, you would get a rousing version of Happy Birthday sung to you, followed by whistles, hoots, and a long hearty stomping of feet on risers. This was usually followed by a weekend celebration of some sort at the local pizza joint, and capped off with running amok around town and then sleeping over at my house where we would eat ice cream cake and tell each other shocking stories of all of our secret lives ("you kissed WHO???") until we crashed in a heap on the floor.

So maybe this is why I have big expectations for the Birthday. But here's what's happened lately. I have the Birthday Curse. For the past four years, stoopid ass shit always happens around my birthday. Sometimes right on my birthday. Sometimes the week of my birthday. Why? What is the universe trying to tell me? Is the cosmos telling me to shut the eff up about the gol-darn birthdays? I am not going to whine about what exactly has happened this year during my Birthday Week. Not anything too specific anyway. Let's just say that I started out the week by getting some godawful cold where I couldn't talk (and Librarian Girl likee the talkee, people) and then there was stressy times at work when I finally got back. Oh, and my washer and dryer went kaput. This is only pre-birthday bad luck. I'm still waiting for the big whammie as the Day gets closer. Remember that game show in the 80s, "Press Your Luck"? No whammies! No whammies! That's what I'm hoping.

Well, be it foolhardy or no, I am going to go right on celebrating my birthday. It's Birthday Week, and I don't care if it sucks, I'm going to have it suck with sparklers and a parade. I will not give up!

As I'm typing this, I'm eating dried apricots. I just bit into one that was full of mold. What kind of luck is that? Stupid Birthday Week.

Kiss the rings, I'm out.
Librarian Girl