Another Birthday--Beats the Heck Out of the Alternative!

Birthdays. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it happens to everybody once a year. I’ve always been a fan as I think it’s nice we celebrate someone on the same day each year by showering them with presents, eating a piece (or three) of cake in their honor, and singing them a Happy Birthday song—the same song that has been sung for generations. Now that I think about it, I have no idea when the “Happy Birthday” song originated, but I’m going to say generations because I feel it evokes sense of tradition I’m trying to get at here.

Sometimes I wonder: “Hey, why am I buying you a present just because you were able to continue to live and breathe for another 365 days?” And then I remember…because it’s just what we do, and I scold myself for asking these questions, which of course have no suitable answer.

My birthday is in the smack-dab middle of summer—July 16^th.  And each year on that day, my mother will tell a varied version of my day of birth 1987. She’ll regale me with the details of when she went into labor (early in the morning), not to mention our house was being re-roofed and the downstairs bathroom was being remodeled. I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details.

 This just-concluded birthday was the big 2-4. 24 years went by much quicker than I thought. This year I went home, spent time with my family, and went to Salem’s Art Fair at Bush Park. The Art Fair is an annual community event and one I hold in high regard. Though I’ve never actually bought art at the art fair, I have purchased my fair share of sno-cones, greasy noodles, and beer. 

The next weekend I celebrated the big day with my friends in Portland, where the highlight of the evening was seven women (that’d be us) went to a parking lot of an empty office building and set off fireworks.  Unfortunately, there’s some skiddish folk among us who got too concerned about a potential noise complaint and we cut off the ‘works at about 10:30pm. Call it an aftershock and/or muscle memory from high school—AKA authority is scary.

Oh! On a final note, I got a crock pot as a b-day gift. Can’t wait to make some crocky-rocky meals.