Happy Birthday to Me!

Okay, so my birthday was yesterday, but you didn't think i was going to waste valuable birthday time posting to this piece of crap blog, did you?

I am 34 years old. Yes, self, you heard yourself right. THIRTY.FOUR. Jesus H. Christ, how did I end up in my mid-thirties??? As I told Todd and Lisa both yesterday, I still feel like I am 24. Ten years ago, i was a recent college graduate, with a brand spanking new job in the computer industry, staying out till 2 am on work nights, and dating a guy who seemed old at, you guessed it, 32. Poor guy, i was always treating him like he was going to break a hip any minute, and look where I am now.

As much as I still feel 24 most days, I am very happy with what my life is at 34. I have a wonderful husband, my family is healthy and well, and I have two wonderful children. I have maturity, and the wisdom of retrospect. Rollie even gave me my birthday cards, and said, "Happy Birthday!" to me.

All that being said, I also had a FUCKING KICKASS BIRTHDAY, WITH BARELY A CHILD IN SIGHT!!! I got up yesterday, and helped get the kids up, then my sister and I went out for the day while Todd watched Rollie and Matilda. Lisa and i were just going to hang out together for the day, but she surprised me with Bloody Mary Buffet Brunch at Front Page News with the girls (Robin, Vanessa, and Harmony, who turned 31 yesterday). Such a great surprise, and such fun! I had fried chicken and gravy and biscuits and grits! And a Grey Goose bloody mary. mmmmmm. We even participated in that much-sought-after-by-parents-of-little-ones activity known as lingering over a meal. It was heaven.

We then left the girls and Lisa and I went to Target to spend the burning-a-hole-in-my-pocket Target giftcard. It was nice to take the time to pick out a few things, and even try them on in a fitting room. Lisa helped me make some great purchases of new workout clothes (my old ones are the butt of quite a few jokes these days) and more t-shirts, my stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) work uniform. We then proceeded over to Borders, bought overpriced, over-sweetened coffees, and then browsed the books for about an hour. This kind of time-wasting is unheard of for the SAHM.

From there, we decided to head towards home, but as we were driving through the village, Lisa said, "I could go for a beer." I agreed. We found ourselves in The Gravity Pub, an old haunt from my single, childless days. We went in, sat in a booth, and each had two pints while chatting away, discussing our lives, her recent marriage, our parents, our concern for friends of ours who are having a difficult time, and gossiping:

"Even after she lost that weight, she still looked fat to me."

"She was totally so trailer trash."

"Oh my god, she was."

Ah, the relaxation of reminisching about old times and of being a bitch.

We left and it was on to phase II of my fabulous birthday experience: Dinner and drinks with my husband. Just the two of us. Out on the town, together. We left Lisa and Mark with the kids, and we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Ma Li, a Thai place in Virginia Highlands. We love this place. We used to eat there for lunch all the time when we first started dating. It is so not kid-friendly. So, now, it is our special occasion restaurant. We ate dinner and lingered over our beers, then left and returned to the village. We parked and stopped in at the local bookstore. I perused local history books while todd checked out the rest of the store. We then headed over to the EARL. Oddly enough, our waitress was the ex-girlfriend of a friend of ours, whose birthday it also happened to be yesterday. He and I were even born the same year. Odd that we both came out of a vagina on the same day in 1972.

Todd and I drank beer, and watched a little football, and discussed all of the shows that we had both attended before meeting one another. This is an ongoing discussion that we have, the thought that fate and rock and roll meant for us to be together long before we knew one another. All those Lollapaloozas at Lakewood. Fishbone with 24/7 Spyz at the Roxy (where Todd threw up in a trashcan and I had to have a ring cut off my finger after it was bent and cut off my circulation). Pavement. Guided By Voices. Janes Addiction (crutches and kisses? I can't remember.) The Athens party that we both attended with the stupid big-ass hats. All of the people we knew in common - The Auburn kids in Athens, the Athens people that Todd knew in Atlanta, the weird ass association between Lisa's best friend and the guy that used to live in Todd's parents' house. The night that the naked guy walked through the Fountainhead, carrying a drink and a cigarette. And the oh-so-close-to-one-another Radiohead show at the Masquerade, three days before I moved with my then-boyfriend and another friend to Colorado. I could have reached out and touched him, but I wasn't ready for that yet. I had a couple more losers to date, a couple more doesn't quite do it for me, but fun to hang out with boys to see. Such fun to talk about the what-ifs.

We decided to take pity on Lisa and Mark, to pay up and head home. We didn't see our friend's ex, the waitress. Todd asked another waitress for our check, and he looks at me and shrugs and rolls his eyes about the waitress being MIA.

Me: "She probably knows she will get a good tip from us, so she didn't bother to wait on us that well. You know, I never really liked her that much."
Todd: "She kinda rubbed you the wrong way."
Me: "Yeah. Like she thought she was a little too cool for school."
Todd: "Exactly."
The 2nd waitress returns with our check: "T. took care of your last round."
Todd and I look at each other sheepishly, having just badmouthed the poor girl.
Todd looks at the check, then says, "Wait a minute. She charged us for the whole thing. she didn't take care of shit."
Me: "I never did like that bitch."