birthday hangover

I know you've all been confused and wondering what's been missing from your lives over the past week - and I will tell you. It was me. It's just that, you see, it was my birthday week. So I've been busy being showered with love and attention and extravagant gifts and doing fanciful activities all week long. Far too busy to write anything or even remember I have a blog. Or a job. Or any other role aside from birthday-haver. You understand.

I love birthdays. We know this. And my birthday week was, for all intents and purposes, stellar. Here are some items I'd like to highlight as being especially lovely on what was a great segue into *GASP* my late twenties.

this picture is my new favorite thing.

I drank a hot toddy, ate free banana pudding and watched open mic comedy. I saw Thoroughly Modern Millie on a big screen - wearing long pearls - and we danced the (tap-tap-tap)Tapioca in the aisles after. This in particular was the kind of wondrous activity I wouldn't have even wished for because I didn't know something so wonderful could exist. I saw a brilliant production of Wicked. I'd seen it before and I love that musical, but this was a level of good where I was choked up during every song - not because it was emotional - but because it was so unbelievably beautiful. I got cute shoes and pictures of tomato plants and cakes and DrawSomething drawings of cakes and birthday cake oreo ice cream [somebody get that outta my house please] and phone calls and texts and words of affirmation out the wazoo. I got my very own karaoke party with so many people I love and I got to dance the Cupid Shuffle and really, what more do I need? Nothing, that's what.

I don't mean to sound braggy, but honestly, I feel a little braggy.

And now in closing, thank you, all of you, for knowing just exactly what would fill me with birthday joy. Thank you for a perfectly lovely week in which you attended happily to my every whim and desire, which apparently includes watching weird musicals from the 60's, laughing at amateur comedians while consuming geriatric treats, and singing Mandy Moore for an audience. And to those of you who know me so well, who know my craziest, ugliest, and most broken parts and who have stuck around to love me, I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are, by far, my most prized gift.

Though I love my birthday more than words can say, I know when it's time to step out of the spotlight and resume normal life. If you need me I'll be here listening to the Oldies but Goodies Pandora station to cope with it all. And so with that, I bid you adieu, birthday week. Hello, late 20's. Let's try to be friends.