They're Smoking Cigars

Tomorrow is my birthday. Although this may be the year that I decided to stop counting, it’s not really all bad. I’ve already gotten some cool gifts. My complete aversion to sunlight has helped stave off wrinkles and I look a few years younger than I am*. In any case, I’m not having a big birthday freakout or anything. And to honor the day my mother was knocked out for many hours and doesn’t remember at all, except for when she came out of the anesthesia and didn’t believe that she had had a girl and kept screaming, “I know you’re all just trying to be nice. It’s a boy, isn’t it?”**, I’m taking tomorrow off from work.

There are lots of things I could and should be doing tomorrow:

1. Sleeping late.
2. Taking advantage of my Loehmann’s Insider Club birthday discount.
3. Buying heel pads for my new shoes, the left one of which keeps sliding off because my left foot is freakishly smaller than my right.
4. Taking myself out for an elegant and sophisticated solo birthday lunch.
5. Doing an extra-long workout at the gym.
6. Pondering the wonder of another year of me and setting out my goals for the next year.

What I will probably end up doing:

1. Waking up at the usual time***.
2. Sitting around in my robe for most of the day.
3. Rereading an Agatha Christie mystery that I’ve probably already read at least twice.
4. Watching several hours of soap operas.
5. Spending time stretched out on the couch pondering the wonder that is Stevie Nicks.
6. Shaking my fist at the heavens and screaming, “Why, God, why?”

*Being a vampire has its advantages.
**Mom really didn’t want a boy at the time. She has since remarked that it might not have been so bad to have a boy, since it was likely that any man child she and my father produced would have been gay. She’s probably right.
***Insomniacs aren’t so good at the whole sleeping late thing.