you say it's your birthday?

Dear Readers,
I have an extremely sad announcement to make. I can no longer continue writing this blog. It takes up too much time, time I would rather devote to pursuing my country music career. So there will be no more wiggling it, just a little bit.

April Fools!

A day late!

Man, don’t you think that could have been really something? If I’d drawn it out more and gotten the entry up on the right day? I think that would have been fun. But I was too lazy.

In addition to general laziness yesterday, I was also busy celebrating my birthday, which as some readers may know, falls upon April Fool’s Day. It was a nice, low-key day, which is the way I wanted it, but unfortunately, this birthday will be forever remembered as the birthday where my Comcast service went out as soon as I sat down to watch some birthday television and read some birthday emails. So while I heard from friends and relations far and wide, the person I might have spent the most time speaking with was a Comcast representative. While Comcast was extremely sympathetic that I couldn’t watch the birthday editions of my favorite shows, they were not so sympathetic that they would fix my service immediately. It won’t be fixed, in fact, til Saturday.

Well, since I have this extra time on my hands, I thought I’d look back at some of my memorable birthdays:
April 1, 1982: I am born. To be fair, this is not a “memorable” birthday because I don’t “remember” it. But I have heard the legends of how I made it into the world. I was about a week late. When my mom went into labor in the wee hours of the morning, my dad didn’t take her at first because he thought it was an April Fool’s joke. But that might have been exaggerated because recently Mom said that she wasn’t quite sure that she was in labor. They started out for the hospital anyways, and were about halfway there when Dad realized he forgot to turn off the alarm clock that would be going off in a few hours, and that would freak out the cats, so they turned around to go home and turn off the alarm clock. That’s right, the mental health of their cats was a more important than the birth of their first child. But anyways, by the time they were headed back to the hospital, Mom was sure that this was actually labor and I emerged at 10:40 a.m. When the doctor announced it was a girl, my parents thought it was an April Fool’s joke because previous doctors had predicted that I would be a boy based on the strength of my heartbeat. I am such a trickster!

April 1, 1987: I turn five. I remember this birthday primarily because it was captured on home video. This video does not present the most flattering version of me…I got a vinyl record and jumped all around screeching and it was not attractive. It was a Randy Travis record, for anyone interested, and my first concert, Randy Travis at the Asheville Civic Center, was also a present that year as I recall. On this tape, I tend to get mad and yell at my brothers a lot, George because he kept trying to open my presents and William because he took his first steps and upstaged me on my birthday. What starts as a video of little Molly opening her presents turns into a video of baby William trying to walk. And I don’t know if our relationship has ever overcome this jealousy.

April 1, year uncertain: I’m not sure exactly whether I was turning 12 or 13 but sometime in middle school I had a birthday where I got like six CDs as presents and then went bowling with my friends. I remember that as an extremely pleasant birthday.

April 1, 1998: Sweet 16. The year that everyone in my group of friends turned 16, I remember we did a lot of scavenger hunts, because we could all drive and go around and look for things. So I remember I had a pretty cool scavenger hunt that turned mildly embarrassing when I couldn’t pump gas. The guy had to show me how. If only I’d paid more attention at the 10 previous scavenger hunt birthday parties I went to that year!

April 1, 2000: Despite being only a high school senior, I turned 18 at Emory because I was down there for scholarship interview weekend. Being interviewed on my birthday was a bit stressful, and since this was before cell phones, I called my parents on a pay phone, primarily because that was the day when all other colleges were supposed to let you know if you’d been accepted or not. But there had been a snowstorm in eastern North Carolina and so a lot of my decisions weren’t there yet. It was very frustrating to have only a brief pay phone call home and to get such crappy news. But that night the other people there interviewing took me out and got me a balloon, and I remember looking around and thinking that these people were very nice and that I could definitely see myself at school there.

April 1, 2001: Flash forward a year, when I was there. I had the most miserable birthday ever because I was extremely sick and trying to write a huge paper that was due the next day that was some ungodly percentage of my grade. All my friends in my freshman dorm came in and sang happy birthday but I was so sick and tired that I just burst into tears. A real low-point birthday.

April 1, 2003: But I would say that my highest-point birthday was turning 21 in Rome. I went to the Coliseum with a friend that was visiting and that night went to dinner with a few friends at this restaurant that was on my street that we all loved. The waiter, who we’d become friends with over the course of the semester, gave me a bottle of wine and had the street musicians outside play happy birthday. Then we drank, but since we’d been abroad for a few months anyways, it was relaxed fun drinking, as opposed to the, I’m 21 now and can drink for the first time drinking. It was a great night.

April 1, 2005: This was my first birthday in Seattle. I had just ended an internship and was only working at Old Navy at this point. The night before, a few people from Old Navy went out, because it was my birthday and this other girl’s who worked there. I know that several respectable adults read this blog, and I hope they won’t mind when I report that I got so, so drunk that night. It was the kind of drunk that makes you swear you’ll never drink again. The kind of drunk where you wake up with 50-year-old men’s phone numbers in your pocket. The kind of drunk where you wake up with big bumps on your head and you remember that that’s from when your head hit the toilet the night before. Oh my.

The next day on this same year, the actual birthday, I woke up and took myself shopping. I only worked nights so I had some free time in the days. I went to the mall determined to buy something, but the only thing I could find that I really wanted was some underwear at Victoria’s Secret. Well, I get in line behind this VERY pregnant woman, and she and the salesgirl start talking about when she’s due, and they start talking about how HORRIBLE it would be if she gave birth on April First. So I finally had to pipe up and defend my birthday, and they both looked at me so sadly. Maybe because I was buying underwear on my birthday in a very hungover state. It’s hard to say.

On a side note, part of the reason I went to the mall is because I have this thing about food courts that you might have noticed in recent months. But that day is when I started to realize that West Coast food courts SUCKED.

Then (this was a pretty epic birthday) that night I went out for Mexican food with my friends Matthew, Nekesa and Katy. We went to a Seattle place called Tia Lou’s. When the waiters found out it was my birthday, they gave me this shot and then grabbed my head and shook it all around (let me tell you, I didn’t need that in the state I was in). Then, one of the waitstaff lifted up his apron and showed me this puppet penis. It was fake..he was wearing pants…but under the apron was a giant puppet penis. In talking to other people from Seattle, I hear this comes out a lot at bachelorette parties. But I got it for my birthday. Then Tia Lou’s went from being a respectable Mexican restaurant to a weird club with a high cover charge, so we watched that changeover for awhile before going back to google “puppet penis” and eat cake.


Well, I guess I’ll stop there. I certainly have other birthday memories, like the time I had a McDonald’s party and got to work the ice cream machine, the time I made my college roommate throw me a hot dog bowling party, the time my grandmother made me a ooey gooey chocolate cake, the time in which my boss made me a funfetti cake. And joining the ranks, the time in which my cable went out when all I wanted to do was watch television.