Happy Birthday to Me!!

Well, 51 years ago today I was born. This was also Labor Day in 1958 as well as the day of the Miss America Pageant. My mother looked at her beautiful blue eyed baby girl and made a silent with that one day she would become a Miss America. Boy was I one big disappointment. Hey mom....I didn't make Miss America but I was the first woman ever convicted of robbery in Alameda County? That's got to count for something, eh?

Birthdays when we are adults are nothing like birthdays when we were children. Adult birthdays are so....adult. My mom may have done alot of things wrong but when it came to my birthdays, she did everything right. The first birthday cake I can remember was this huge doll cake. She made the cake into the dress of the doll, each layer was decorated more beautifully than the next. There was a beautiful girl doll sitting on the top so the cake was her ball gown.

She would invite all my friends and we would go to 'Adventure Land" which was an amusement park on the coast in San Francisco, well, it was Pacifica. There was this lady robot (but we thought she was real when we were little) that laughed and swayed back and forth while laughing in this scary, but contagious way. Once you walked inside the "Fun House", these big turn styles were swirling around and around so if you were wearing any skirts or dresses, they were blown all over and whipped up. This was the classic fun house. With the sidewalk that moved sideways, it had this awesome all wood super slide that you used a burlap bag to sit in and go flying down to the bottom. They had this really fun centrifugal force disk that we sat on and it began spinning around. As it picked up speed, people start flying off of it and go crashing into a padded wall. It was SO fun trying to hang on to this thing...but it was smooth brass and there was absolutely nothing to hang on to. There was the spinning giant barrel that we walked through and if you fell, you were sent up the sides where you would slide back down, only to be spun up the other side. Getting back up and being able to loco mote yourself out of there took alot of energy but we were kids and had endless supplies of it.

My birthdays as an adult have been way less exciting. My 40th birthday was fun, even though it was me who planned it. I don't remember anyone going all out for my birthday aside from my mom. That is sad because I have gone all out when planning my friends and significant other's birthdays. My crowning glory was planning my dad's 70th surprise party. That was awesome, I had gathered family from all over the country to gather at my house and totally surprise my dad when we took him to the Eagles Club in Granite Falls. It was all my doing, I did all the inviting, food planning and preparation.....everything. It felt so great to see my dad's face when he walked in and saw all of his sons in the same room along with his long lost brother and nieces and nephews. I felt like I had completed the most awesome task.

Last year was a biggy, 50th birthday. I spent it with two people that are no longer my friends...and that is sad because I enjoyed their company but the woman had too many issues with me and was unable to keep up the front of pretending she liked me. They took me out to dinner and we then went and sang Karaoke. I had an OK time. Nothing special, later I was told how horribly I had acted...even though I was stone cold sober and she got so drunk that she made a complete fool of herself when she got up to sing. There is not much more painful that watching(listening...ouch) to a friend making a complete ass out of herself in front of a room full of people and not being able to do a damn thing but sit there and hope it ends soon. Watching all the people roll their eyes and put their hands over their ears was hard to do...well...ok, it was funny because all I had heard about from this person was what an amazing voice she had and what a great singer she was. She was always wanting to go sing Karaoke with me and I had a slight idea what she was going to sound like, I had heard her singing with the radio when we went for drives. She did not disappoint. She opened her mouth and every ear in the place was wounded. She had no idea and kept singing and her boyfriend turned to me and said, "I don't know why she keeps trying to do this, she is not good at it but I can't tell her that." Awwww poor dude.

I woke up alone this morning. Yeah....how sucky. I have a 'best friend' I live with. Well, she is my friend but she sure isn't the 'best' friend I have ever had. I Love her and I am not quite sure why. Maybe it is my unused maternal instincts that keep her in my life. She is the child I never had. I don't know what it is, but i do love her and I try not to have expectations of her so that I am not continually disappointed or hurt...but that was hard today. I had hoped she would consider this day important enough to stay home for. It would have been so great to wake up to a cupcake with a candle in it to go with my coffee.....perhaps a card or some cheesy lil present. I know she has very little money to operate with, but she could have spent a couple bucks to get me something just to show me she was thinking about me and that she considered my waking up to a friendly show of love and appreciation

....but alas, it didn't turn out that way. I am ok, I am always ok....My mom once told me a great saying and it goes like this, "Of all sad words of tongue of pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been'". I might have had a cupcake with a candle in it waiting for me when I woke up this morning, but it wasn't here and my day is going to be the same regardless of how it started out. I do not dwell on negative things for very long. That is not healthy and it does no good. I am 51, healthy, employed, attractive, my cat has food, my car has gas, my refrigerator has food in it and I have a roof over my head. That's all I need to be happy....that and this coffee cup....and this ash tray, and I won't need anything else, but this computer...my coffee cup, ash try and computer and that's all I need and I don't need nothing else....but my cat...my cat, this computer, my ashtray and my coffee cup...and that's all I need.
See ya