Birthday Guest Blog!

It's my birthday! Yes! I haven't cried yet today, so this is obviously going to be one of the good birthdays, rather than the soul-searching what am I doing with my life birthdays. So that's nice. Liz wrote me a little birthday guest blog, I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did:

On March 9th 2010, I really let Ms. Wrong down. I’ve let her down more times than I can count. Every time I’ve declined to swill tequila shots, or turned up my nose at some libation she gets this dejected look as if I’ve kicked her dog . When I can’t make it to an event because of a prior engagement it's like I let it spill that Santa was a pedophile. And when I didn’t save her a piece of chicken-pot-pie from a potluck she was delayed in arriving to, well that was the equivalent of sticking coal in her stocking. All of those failures on my part pale in comparison to her birthday last year, when I went home early for no better reason than the fact that I was “tired”.

Tired? For God’s sake I was just 26 years old, did I think it was going to get easier as I got older? Did I think that for some reason simply having a job that started early in the morning should make me exempt from drinking recklessly with one of my best friends? How could I be so deluded with the imagined importance of my “career” as a low-level manager, to think that it would really harm me if I had to drink a few extra cups of coffee in the morning to seem chipper at the 7:30 meeting? And a better question, when on earth did I get to be such an old sandy vagina with such pathetic excuses? I disgust myself. So, upon hearing the words, “I think I’m going to bail”, I was surprised to see Ms. Wrong take the news so stoically. In fact, I was so surprised, I asked again, "are you sure?". She told me again that it was fine, but I know, because of the subsequent times that she has mentioned it over the past year, not with judgment, but with sadness, that a little part of her soul died that night, along with a little bit of her youth.

Well, that it won't happen this year. In fact, I started pre-hydrating for this evening four days in advance. I'm going to go out, I am not going to look at my watch, I will shimmy, and swill, and make merry, and I will like it. I will fucking love it in fact. But really, how could I not love every opportunity I have to celebrate such a dear, unique and wonderful friend on her birthday?  I've even look forward to buying her a diet coke, and listening her moan as she laments the fun we had.

P.S. I also hope all my Portland friends will be at the Standard tonight to see Liz in action. It should be pretty good.