Birthday gir...grown-ass woman

"I'm old enough to know better/but I'm still too young to care."--Wade Hayes, "Old Enough to Know Better"

I've been told that with all the random bursts of thought I have and the articles I want to share, Twitter would be great for me. And the people who told me that are right. I've been enjoying it a whole lot more than I thought, and I apologize to everyone who used it before I did for making fun of it.

Not a lot has happened since I last posted. Today I belly-danced for the first time since my myomectomy, and tomorrow, hopefully, I can go surf with my best friend Yemaya. It's been heavy, heavy rain, which is livable. I always have to laugh when people go, "Surfing in the *rain*?", like I wouldn't be getting wet otherwise! What's never okay is lightning, and we're a little concerned about that.

I turned 36 on Thursday. Still seems like a slightly bigger number than fits me, but there I am. (And I'm not fishing for any "Oh, no, that's still young!" protestations, either. I know it's not, especially when I listen to pop music or hear my little intern girls talk about their weekends.) My mom and my wife both tell me I look 10 years younger than I am. Mom, of course, is invested in that idea--she doesn't want people thinking she's old enough to have a 36-year-old daughter. L'Ailee really does look 10 years younger than she is, and sometimes when she skates or demonstrates gymnastics moves to kids or something, she actually reminds me of when we were in our late teens again. I'd take her opinion.

I always used to dread my birthdays. When I was a kid, I had horrible ones. Mom thought I had measles on my seventh birthday; it turned out that I was allergic to the dryer sheets she used. (My chemical allergies aren't quite as bad as they were when I was a girl, but I'm still careful about what I use, and I still absolutely will never use Bounce.) So I missed out on decorating the corkboard in my classroom my way and handing out cupcakes. We tried to have a Sweet 16 party, but nobody showed up except a few neighbors who wandered in for food. Others weren't quite that horrible, but they weren't good, either. One of the nice things about being grown is that you can take control over your birthday in your hands and do your best to *make* it good. As the drag queen Nuclia Waste says, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

L'Ailee started the morning by giving me fantastic lingerie. She doesn't cook. She ordered a couple of cupcakes for me--vegan, dark chocolate/orange flavored, with orange frosting. I actually had one for breakfast. It was so good. The day was pretty decent all around. I worked, but got a steady stream of e-cards, texts, and regular cards, as well as an iTunes gift card from my boss. I met up with several of my friends and L'Ailee at an Indian restaurant after work. We chose it because it didn't have a huge Wall Street presence or seem like the kind of place where a group of thirtysomethings would go to celebrate a birthday. However, the owners could see that something was up, and offered us free dessert. I had gajar halva, a/k/a carrot pudding, which is an awesome shade of neon orange and tastes like carrot cake without the cake.

Several friends went in for a present. We do that a lot--why give a bunch of lame little things when we can give, say, that perfume she loves but can't afford or the sick new smartphone he's been wanting? Mine was two tickets to the Pittsburgh Penguins/New Jersey Devils game on March 17th. The Penguins have not been able to beat the Devils once this season, including an incredibly frustrating game last night, but we hope the Pens can win just one before the season's over. Anyway, it's always fun to actually be at the game, and the seats are damn near on the glass. We've watched a lot of live hockey this season, at least for us. I hope we can also all go see the race in Watkins Glen this summer, but for me and L'Ailee, that will depend on whether I can get interior decorating work or not.

L'Ailee's real present wasn't the lingerie. It was allowing me to go dancing with some of my friends, without her, and not giving me any shit at all over it. She couldn't go because Friday is always her busiest day at the gym and she needed to get some rest. I changed into jeans, a tank top, and my favorite cowgirl boots, and we kissed goodbye before she took my work clothes home. So sweet of her. I thanked her probably a thousand times for doing that. I felt incredibly guilty, actually, but she kept insisting that it was okay for me to "go dance and have fun" without her.

Yemaya is a pastry chef and never has the weekends off, so she was also really eager to go out at night for once and had all kinds of places in mind to take me. She's always been my favorite dance partner, though I danced with a few other people as well, mostly men. B. wanted to go to a country bar, and I was dressed perfectly for that. He hardly goes out at night, either. Of the eight of us who started out, everyone had to go home eventually, except Yemaya. Our second-to-last stop, before coffee, was a lesbian club. There was a "curious" and recently divorced woman, our age, who had her friend trying to encourage her to make a move. I became her first same-sex dance partner besides that friend. She wanted to exchange numbers, but I showed her my rings quickly. She seemed to feel a bit better, though, and was dancing with another woman by the time we left.

It's always a good birthday, I think, when you eat and drink a little too much and have fun with friends who know what you need. This is one that I'll remember forever in a good way. I'm so grateful for that. I got maybe 3 hours' sleep and had to remember all the job-preservation techniques I'd learned when Yemaya was dragging me around Orlando clubs eons ago. It was cool, but I felt really okay with being 36. That's still a fun place to visit. I'm glad we don't live there anymore.

Links, links:

I found out about an LGBT country dance club called Big Apple Ranch! That'll be my next going-out night. I'm going to have to really work on people to go--my queer friends (including L'Ailee) don't like country, and my friends who like country are all straight!

You may have heard about the super-controversial meeting of the Texas Board of Education that determined the content of the state's--and by extension, much of the country's--textbooks. Huffington Post explains what happened with the Texas Textbook Massacre.

But New York isn't immune from stupidity, as I'm sure y'all have been seeing. Right now, since we don't have any other problems with our budget or misuses of office or anything, and since everyone in the city is getting enough healthful stuff to eat, and since we all must be saved from enjoying a single morsel of our food, Brooklyn's assemblyman Felix Ortiz wanted to try banning salt from restaurants. (Yemaya has proposed some medieval tortures involving salt for him.) Thank the Gods, a few people in the Assembly seem to have gone temporarily sane.

Finally, check out these sick surfing moves! I am not trying any of these!