Forty Fucking Four

• Yesterday was my party but today is my actual birthday, and tomorrow is my US birthday, so we're kind of right in the middle of it now.
• This morning someone looked at me, shocked, and said, "Do you have a cold? You look really tired." Just before inviting me to have cake with the rest of the office.
• The Italian guy at work thought I was 34, which is only 6 years older than him rather than 16. Will he think of me differently now? Of course he will. But then, I assumed he already assumed I was as old as I am.
• He said, "It's how you feel inside that's the important thing, anyway."
• On the walk home from work (cold, dark) I felt hung over and like I was getting a cold.
• Being 44 is better than the alternative, isn't that what they say?
• I had the people who love me around me yesterday, and the party was really fun and people said they enjoyed it, but where are they now?
• I'm whinging. It's my party!
• ("It's My Party" is actually my song, it was #1 on the Billboard Top 40 the day I was born, and the song that was number one is supposed to determine your life. It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to.)
• I knew Pointy Head was back in town because I saw him and his work colleague on the other side of the road last week when I was walking home, and I didn't stop or say hi or anything. That night I looked really tired too. You want to wait until you're in a strong position before seeing your ex, don't you? Like going to a High School reunion.
• This morning he sent me an eCard, so I could think with poignant symmetry, "Four years ago you took me to Tetsuya's, now you send me an eCard." But then he sent an actual email too, and suggested getting together, which occasion I've been dreading because I've planned the reply, "Actually, I'm kind of enjoying having you be part of my distant past, so I'll say no." But now the invitation is actually there, and I'm finding it hard to say that. I got surpringly sort of a little emotional about it this morning. I will perhaps never be over him. I will perhaps always want him back.
• Quote from my neighbor about something else: "I don't want closure, I just want him back!"
• There is the step-kid issue. I'll have to see him to see her, which I have to. But maybe not just now, just today, on my birthday.
• It's been cold and rainy, and tonight it is just cold.
• I still have to mop the floor from the party.
• Mercedes Guy is gorgeous and perhaps the best-dressed man I've ever met in my life, but the boss described him as "scatty", and I think he's even kind of mean. Not a go.
• Italian guy is not a go because I work with him, not to mention that he's 16 years younger than me and now knows that.
• I'm probably just hung over.
• I might be getting a cold.
• It is nice having a birthday, and I got an email from my sister just on midnight to ring it in with celebration and happiness.
• I got a Happy Plant, from some friends who are moving, and I moved it from the front door where the happiness might go out, to right in the back in the romance spot. That should do the trick, hey?
• What I was gunna do is write poetry and do homework, but here I am just bogging again.
• I was also gunna get some Singapore Noodles from across the street but instead just had party leftovers. Steamed the cut veggies that I had cut up to put in dip. Probably v. healthy. So good for me.
• Birthdays are nice and it's nice to have a June birthday, and all the other June birthdays are happy and it's nice.

___

p.s. After writing that very whingey and sorry-for-self birthday post, I got a call from a dear friend who didn't even remember that it was my birthday, and is having new-relationship dramas and needed to talk. And I realised that my problems are very minor, and that I do have love all around, and birthdays are just another day to most everyone but oneself, and it's all fine.

Sam DeBrito did a good blog on being a good listener today, and I was trying to do that tonight, but in the end had to give some potted advice and fell back on Dr Phil. Thank goodness for Dr Phil.

Happy birthday to me, everyone! Forty fucking four, as my friend Todd said, when he turned it first. He's right, though - we are just as cute, but older and wiser.