they say it's your birthday... It's my birthday too! Really, it is. Big whoop huh?

Reminds me of that old Dik Van Dykes' birthday song that ends with "big fuckin' deal." It truly isn't a big deal for me anymore. My grandmother always made a big deal over your birthday, and when you're a kid, it should be. Nana always said, "if it wasn't for your birthday, you wouldn't be around for Christmas." I guess this means that Christmas shouldn't be such a big honking deal and that you should really celebrate the anniversary of your birth. When I was a little kid, I looked forward to it so much, counting down the days, planning the guest list for the party, deciding what colour icing I wanted to have on my orange cake (yes, I am that old actually, you could still get orange cake mixes back then -- how chic huh?).

This morning when I woke up, it had completely slipped my mind until Mark wished me a Happy Birthday. My parents phoned me at the office this morning to sing "happy birthday" to me. Even my dad. That was a surprise, he's not usually the song-singing type. Fortunately, my boss is off today so I'm (hoping) probably going to be able to avoid the requisite "cake in the parlour" birthday ritual that our office is famous for (and yes, we do have a parlour, I work in a building which is almost 200 years old and used to be a mansion before it was converted to offices). I'm not eating cake these days so it would be silly anyway, to have a cake for a person who doesn't even eat them. My friends have acknowledged my birthday in subtle, sweet ways today, via emails and phone calls and it's nice and all but I guess 36 is just an anti-climatic birthday (yes, do the math, I was a "Centennial" baby).

Last year's birthday was quite traumatic as I moved from "18-34" to "35-54" on survey's and the like. This year, it's a non-event. I guess the more of them that you have, the less important they become. I'll probably not stress about it too much for a couple of years when 40 looms on the horizon. We'll see I guess.