You say it's your birthday

I love my birthday. I think it's a day that should be celebrated far and wide, high and low, and preferably with a lot of presents and baked goods.  The trouble is, no one else shares that enthusiasm.  For MY birthday, that is. Everyone else is pretty enthusiastic about their big day though.  And you know what?  That's ok.

I'm slow. I admit it.  Sometimes it takes a while for me to clue in to things that other people seem to get pretty easily. I think part of it is just denial and me not wanting to accept the situation. Other times, my brain simply does not work the way that it needs to in order to truly grasp something.  There are reasons I'm not an astrophysicist you know. 

One thing I finally decided to acknowledge and understand this year is that no one cares about your birthday except you. Oh, it's not a 100% thing of course. I have family members and I care about their birthdays and things like that, but for the most part, can anyone honestly say that they get excited to the same level about someone else's birthday as you do about your own?  I question the veracity if you can.  That being the case, this year I finally decided to admit that I am the only person who really gets excited about my birthday.  For years I've wanted other people to appreciate it as much as I do, but that has only lead to years of letdowns and quite honestly, some hypocriticalness (is that a word?) on my part because it's not like I'm bending over backwards to make anyone else's birthday a super special occasion.  It's not like I remember to send cards or presents or anything, so there's simply no logic in having that expectation of others sending things to me.



In the zoo gardens. Purple is my favorite color.

Armed at last with this knowledge, I chose this year to let it go and do things that made me happy without giving much, if any, thought to whether or not anyone else even cared that it was "my special day".  It was pretty nice I must say.  I took a couple of days off work and made it a nice, long weekend. I booked a massage, I did a lot of window shopping and walking around, and I went to the zoo here in town, which is one of my favorite things to do. I only ever go once a year, but once is enough for me really.  After nearly 3 hours of walking around, my feet were grateful that it doesn't happen more than once a year too.  I considered going to the State Fair, but never having been a fair goer (I have literally gone to one fair in my life and that was 20 years ago), the appeal wasn't great. Don't even get me started on how I can't eat fair food. Not unless I wanted to be praying for death at how sick it would make me.



Color is one of my favorite things.  The botanical gardens were a great site for finding all the colors.

So now my birthday has come and gone. Friends and family were kind enough to acknowledge it with texts or emails or cards, but there was no big celebration.  Oh sure, I bought myself some cupcakes (and someone was even kind enough to have offered to make me a cake, but I declined) and have eaten one of them, but there was no great fanfare.  And that's ok.  Not that I'd mind some fanfare, but maybe now it's no longer required. 



I'd love a yard that looks like this...without me having to do any work!