I have a love/hate relationship with my birthday. On one hand, I'd love to be spoiled rotten on my birthday. On the other hand, I hate that I'm not. ;-)My family is tired of hearing this, I'm sure, but I put a lot of stock in birthdays. I think there's some deep psychosis about being adopted and abandonned or I was spoiled by my adoptive mother who was fairly nasty most of the time but did birthdays and every Christmas to the max. Who knows.
So I generally feel sorry for myself on my birthday. It's not that I don't like to get older--I really don't mind. It's just that I want to be pampered. I want to be spoiled. I want to be awakened to breakfast in bed, be whisked away on some surprise adventure and hear from lots of my friends. I want to be outside in the sunshine, planting something or taking photographs or shopping. I want to listen to music, dance, sing, celebrate. I want to be with my family, my whole family, and I want them to set aside all other things so that I'm the focus of the day. And I want to do NO housework, but I want it all to be done for me.
As for gifts, I'll take a letter. Nice, long letters are my favorite gift. Getting mail is one of my simple pleasures. Beyond that, I reserve my special day to buy myself good pottery, yummy chocolate, country magazines or a funky pair of earrings. My mother-in-law is always the very best at knowing just what to give me as a gift, and my daughter, Bard, never fails to give me a gift from her heart. Thank God for them!
And thank God for my kids and my darling husband who put up with my moodiness and listen to me whine about my high expectations. I'm definitely a bear, that's for sure. Yesterday, in spite of my moping and whining, they took me for a little hiking excursion and out to Olive Garden for dinner. They gave me gifts of Circus Peanuts, chocolate squares, earrings, a sweet charm bracelet, hand-made cards and letters. This morning, my dear Bo joined me for breakfast at our local homestyle restaurant where I signed the guestbook "Happy Birthday to Me!" which prompted the hostess to present me with a sweet little chocolate cake while all of the mostly Amish staff came out to sing happy birthday (though the Amish don't have the "th" sound in their language, so it comes out "birssday"). It made me smile from ear to ear, and I don't know that I'll ever eat that little cake!
How do you feel about your birthday? Does it encourage you? Depress you? How does your family celebrate those special days? What was your best birthday ever?
