29th Birthdays are Such a Cliche. Everyone Turns 29...OK, I Mean, Obviously, but...You Know What I Mean

First thing on Thursday morning (which was my 29th birthday. The first one) I received an e-mail from a friend. The e-mail contained pictures from a joint birthday party four years ago. In one photo I look like that chubby mouse in Cinderella. In another I look like a mentally challenged zombie, and in yet another I look like a pox addled donkey with a lazy eye. I think her intentions were good. On the other hand, it could be passive-aggressive shorthand for "You never call, you never write. And after all I do for you."


Cinderelly! Cinderelly!

I like to embarrass myself on my birthday...it keeps me humble-ish.

My mom called to tell my happy birthday of course. We had the following conversation:

Mom: 29 years ago today I hadn't met you yet, but I got a phone call telling me you were born. I loved you before I even met you. I even loved you all those long months when you wouldn't sleep because of colic and all the years after that you refused to sleep at night or nap in the afternoon.

Me: Thanks, Mom, I love you too. And if you had let me stay up at least one night you probably never would have had trouble getting me to go to sleep again. I was thoroughly convinced you were waiting for me to go to sleep to have a lot of awesome fun.

Mom: I guess if your idea of awesome was watching Dallas and going to bed early, alone, then, yeah, it was awesome.

My mom has her issues, but sometimes you can see where I get my personality from.

My husband gave me the gift of wisdom in addition to the more important material gifts. One of which was wrapped in Christmas paper. The wisdom was this: Don't worry about it. You've been middle aged since you were 26 anyway.

It's okay. He was middle aged first. Although he likes to remind me that no matter wrinkled and craggy and gray he gets, people will describe him as rugged and/or distinguished. And no matter how awesome I look at 40, people will still describe me as old. There is a reason men have shorter life spans than women. The statement itself for one thing, but also the fact that he's probably right.

The dogs also got me a present. It is a dead bird. The pinhead caught it herself, and then they mangled it up really nicely before giving it to me. That's the fourth one this month. I think the birds are starting to give me the stink eye. If they start flinging themselves at the window and dive bombing me, I'm totally giving the dogs to them as an appeasatory sacrifice. Birds are fucking creepy y'all.