Well, according to my computer's clock, we just wrapped up the year 28. That was … eventful.

What's 29 got in store? Anyone got any ideas?

Well, I do: I just took my meds, and they're about to make me tump over, so my first Official Prognostication for my birthday is that I will now sleep. Deeply. Until six a.m., when my evil little Tenzing (who, by the way, the vet says is 14 pounds now) will wake me up because he's huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuungry.

Then he'll eat two bites and go back to sleep.

Obnoxious little twit.

"I always get kinda thinky on this day. Don't mind me; it'll pass. It was just a day picked by my mother's obstetrician, but somewhere along the way, along the years, it became 'my' day.
Birthdays: the one day a year our maudlin reflections are truly excused. Luckily, I'm keeping it short & sweet this year.

(Hey, I was breech, and my mother was tiny. They took no chances…and you in the back, the one that just piped up and said "Even from birth you were determined to show your ass!"—I heard that, you little prankster. No cookies for you!)" ——2004, "A good little stomp"

Amidst the preparation of salsa and cookie dough, I'm sure I'll make the time to properly overthink my birthday to death. I make jokes about how overthinking is what I do best, but I've learned something in the past couple of years: life is fragile, and health is fleeting. With every decade of life you celebrate on this planet, your likelihood of celebrating another one drops. I've buried people I loved, and every year on this day I become more keenly aware that this life I lead is fragile, and despite my best intentions to show up here and overthink it all again on October 20th, 2006, I may yet find some utterly melodramatic way to extract myself from this mortal plane before another 365 days manage to pass.

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Personally, I'm betting on being sat on by a rampaging moose. Mostly because Alabama doesn't have moose, and rampaging ones certainly wouldn't sit—but that's why it would be melodramatic!

Seriously, though. You never know when the Great Moose is gunning for your ass.

Thus the birthday throwdown. If we can't defeat mortality, we can challenge it to a drinking contest and take its keys away when it starts hitting on the marrieds and taunting the cats.

Amidst all my planning for the party, which can get lost in the to-do lists and the plans to make cookies and salsa and French toast and grill out and maybe slip in a workout prior to Saturday morning cartoons, let the real reason for the party not fall away:

I'm still here.
You're still here.

"My life is not lived in solitude and silence, and it is those moments of loudness and laughter that make it special. You are too many to list, but, thankfully, not too many to love." ——2003, "Birthday letters (3): the best of intentions"

That's reason enough.

Oddly enough, I mentioned moose in the 2004 birthday entry. That's creepy.

…and, if by some chance, Darren, you ever find this site … happy shared birthday to you, too, cousin.