musings on a non-birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. I've pretty much given up on making my birthdays any big whoop, and choose instead to spoil myself all year whenever I get the chance. Even in my small group of friends and acquaintances, I don't make it known that my birthday is coming up, because I'm very wary of "duty-cheer" -- or maybe it's just fear of people not caring anyway. Either way, it's easier just keeping it private.

Got a surprise phone call, though, from a girlfriend in Greece I haven't talked to in months. And a smile-warming e-card from another unexpected source! ... kisses to L xxx ;)
And I gave my daughter lots of kisses and told her truly, she is my all-year birthday present, and nothing else really matters. She spent more money on me than she ever has in her life, with a couple of cute things she bought from her favorite chachka store. As for the mister, I certainly could be showing more appreciation, but he's really not very good at birthday servitude.

In any case, I needed to spend yesterday working on my writing test assignment for the job I want. Unbelievably, I spent the ENTIRE day on it; it was much more difficult than I'd anticipated. Basically, I had to take 3 pages of verbose text on a technical product and distill its essence into 1 page of scintillating marketing blather. I thought it would take me 4-5 hours, and it took more than double that. Okay, I stopped to make guacamole to eat with the taco chips that were calling to me comfortingly from the cupboard. And I did my usual one hour of meditation. I fed my daughter lunch, but not dinner (until about 10:30 pm when I made her a peanut butter sandwich rather than let her grab a chocolate pudding). I pretty much made myself and everybody else miserable yesterday. The kid couldn't really understand why she was the only person taking my birthday at all seriously, and was annoyed with her father for not making any effort at all. Oh well.

I decided I would just pretend it was my birthday TODAY instead, now that I have the time to play a bit. I sent off the assignment to the woman at the company, and called her to make sure it arrived. She sent me back a nice email saying she got it, and she'd be in touch with me next week. That was encouraging! I'm feeling optimistic. If I actually land this job, I will have conquered big odds in the job-search paradigm, having beat out competition from scores, if not hundreds, of applicants. And I figure I'm about 85% of the way now.

If it's meant to be, it will be.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM