Image above taken from an e-card sent by the Lovely Jane.

.
Hey Internet, today is my birthday! I hit the big three-five today, no kidding. This bee is getting a bit long in the tooth, but still as gorgeous as ever, haha!

I love how the Web pulls us all together virtually, even when we are in reality, thousands of miles apart. This week I have been receiving lots of electronic Greeting cards; it’s been fun clicking on the links and getting an animated greeting, mostly humorous. E-cards kept trickling in from Chicago, North Carolina, LA. Thank you, beautiful people!

My father even had an old-fashioned card sent a week in advance, safely tucked inside a glassine sheet. Inside, his lovely penmanship said, ‘Love Always.’

I’ve been noticing it, the not so subtle changes in the way I celebrate the onset of age. The Older I get, the less festive the celebration. What else can it be but maybe that party pooper virtue they call maturity. Is it a virtue, really? Apparently, the older one gets, the faster time runs out. Even the time supposedly allotted for celebrating one’s accumulated years on this earth.

Anyway, I’m just not into making a great big fuss on birthdays, and I hate surprises. In the city where I used to live, my birthdays were just vague, alcohol-suffused occasions—friends made sure of that. For some years there, a few of my birthdays were spent with the boyfriend of the moment, and that made them vaguely erotic as well as alcoholic. That was another lifetime, of course.

Today, old separated woman that I am, I just threw a pizza blowout for the folks here at the office, and boy, are we stuffed!

Later there are plans to go drinking with some friends, and who knows where the night will take us. A few drinks and some small talk will take care of the commemorating. Before I know it, in a few hours I’ll be 35 and a day.

And so it goes.

.