A sappy interlude (birthdays)

I have been floundering to come up with a good subject for a rant, and as I approached my 26th birthday I thought maybe something birthday related would be appropriate.

I thought about delving back into the old Ice Cream Cake Debate of '06. For those unfamiliar, there are some people out there (and even readers of this blog!) who do not recognize the marriage of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, cookie crumbles, and frosting into a beautiful cake form. In their eyes, ice cream cake can only exist between ice cream and cake. It's amazing this kind of attitude persists in the year 2013. But, I digress. I am not trying to open up old wounds.

I also thought about ranting about cupcakes. The best part of cake is the middle, and with a cupcake you are getting mostly dried out edge! Not to mention they try to give you three parts sickeningly sweet frosting to one part dried out cake and pass it off as gourmet. Just give me a slice of moist cake over a cutesy cupcake any day.

I could rant about people who decide their birthday should be celebrated multiple times over the span of days or weeks and drag everyone around them into their ongoing birthday nightmare.

But none of those rants seemed substantial enough to do the subject of birthdays justice. Of course, with those ideas aside my mind just went to a dark place, thinking about the inexorable march of time, my youth slowly slipping away like sands through the hourglass, that "happy birthday" email from the kind people at OkCupid reminding me of the certainty of dying alone, and the fact that I probably was wearing the same sack dress on this day three years ago. Time keeps passing and nothing changes.

But my icy heart was so quickly melted by the outpouring of love from all the people close to me. Family, friends, people I work with, all giving me sweet and heartfelt birthday wishes. Even people I don't know well at all taking a moment to post on my Facebook wall warmed my heart. It is so easy to pass that off as insignificant, but for even just a second those people were thinking about me and some memory of our friendship or acquaintance. Not to mention the wonderful gifts (my sister gave me a himalayan salt lamp and a caftan that my nephew told me looked like a princess dress!) and celebrations in my honor. Maybe not much has changed, but if nothing else the past year has been filled with lots of quality time with some great people.

Yesterday my family and I celebrated the birth of my new niece, and for years to come her birthday will remind me just how much can happen in a year. What a wonderful start to a new year filled with new experiences, good and bad, boring, exciting, and most importantly shared with all the important people in my life. Thanks everyone for a great year and many more to come.