Saturday, March 5, 2011

Go Shorty, it's your birthday

Today, I am 28 years old!!  (And now, the requisite DAMN I'M OLD, WHEN THE HECK DID THAT HAPPEN).  I love celebrating my birthday, and getting calls from everyone and feeling overall popular.  Yes, it's all about ME.

The odd thing is, I tend to have a little anxiety around my birthday, only because I get very sensitive and insecure and then read everything into things going wrong.  On my 18th birthday, I got a seriously crampy period, then spent the day at home because it was a snow day (I know, why was I complaining?), and then stayed moody the whole week even though my parents had been meticulously planning a surprise birthday party for me at my favorite restaurant.  I read into slights, like who didn't post on my wall on Facebook (what do you mean, you didn't have internet access in rural Kenya??) or who didn't call, which is so ridiculous because I have so many friends and family who love me no matter how many birthdays or special occasions I forget or can't be there for.  So, this year, I decided to take a different route.

I didn't have the best start.  I had asked the nurses to hold off calling me, but instead I spent all of Thursday night chasing nothing-calls.  After finishing my night shift on Friday morning, I went straight to my weekly surgical conference and then to a Long Island surgical conference for a poster competition.  I had brought a blanket with me, vainly thinking I could find a quiet lecture hall to sleep in, but instead spent the day camped out by my poster and trying to stave off my impending grumpiness.  I managed to get an hour or two of sleep Friday night, but then woke early Saturday morning to manage a patient who became so agitated and disoriented in the ICU that she tried to run out completely naked, as her oxygen saturation dropped to 70%.  By the time my sister called at 8 am for her annual early morning birthday call, the only response I could muster was "GAH, it's too early!!   TOO EARLY!!!  AT WORK!!!!  Call me later!!  GAAAAAH!!".  I had to call back later and apologize for being so cranky.

But once I came back and slept for a few hours, I felt like a totally new person.  My dad called to say that he had sent me flowers for my birthday, and my landlord confirmed that my birthday gift to me (a designer dress) had arrived at my apartment.  My boyfriend surprised me with a Kindle so that I could travel and read, which I am still so excited about that I'm having trouble naming it.  (The best I have come up with is Kenny the Kindle.  It needs some work.)  My best friend and her boyfriend called to sing me happy birthday (with the promise of helping me to download books for free).  And we're going out tonight for dinner and a movie, during which I plan to drink a terrific glass of wine and go to bed at a normal hour.

And so, I am breaking my streak.  It's happy birthdays from here on out =)

3 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday! Welcome to the OPC--the "Old People's Club." We're cranky, but hip! (The fact that I just said, "hip," means that we are not in fact, hip.)

    Birthdays make me weird too, I guess because I'm not sure how I'm supposed to celebrate. As in, "I feel like there should be booty shaking involved, but I just want to go home and sleep." :) Have fun tonight...sounds like you had a rough couple of days.

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  2. Happy birthday! It sounds like you had a great day! :)

    Here are some ideas for your kindle, playing off the 'fire' association:

    http://www.behindthename.com/php/search.php?terms=fire&nmd=m&gender=both&operator=or

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  3. Happy belated birthday!

    If in the future you feel yourself falling back into the "bad birthday" pit, just know that it could always be a lot worse (I spent my 19th birthday at a funeral home making funeral arrangements for one of my parents).

    Cheers for many decades of very happy birthdays.

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