Post Birthday

So.  It's Monday.  A Monday after a week of shootings.  Also the Monday after my birthday.  Which was Saturday.

I was very conflicted with my emotions this weekend - birthdays, to me, always mean a happy day full of doing things that make me happy.  Except, I was feeling anything but happy.  Call me funny but the images of what took place in Newtown CT on Friday morning made me feel many, many things.  Happy was definitely not among those feelings.

But it was, after all, my birthday.  Which comes but once a year.  And is often looked over because of the holiday season.  So I wanted to do *something* to feel special.  The kids were with Dakota - which was incredibly hard (made harder still Friday) since it was the first time in 10 years I didn't feel little arms around my neck on my birthday.

Stephanie saw to it that I had a good day.  First there was coffee in bed, then she made me breakfast and then we got ready and went out into the world.  In and out of stores we went all afternoon...buying precious little (and definitely not pandora charms though they are pretty darn nice!) but having fun none the less.

We ended our day with dinner at the Spaghetti Factory.  It's a favorite place of mine and somewhere I rarely go.  I think the last time I was there was well over a year ago.  It was nice but I was in such an emotional state, I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to.  That - and because I was all topsy turvy inside, I wasn't very hungry.

After dinner, we headed back to the house and brought in the bins of Christmas gifts and we wrapped gifts while watching a Christmas movie. 

Before I knew it, the evening was over and it was bedtime.  My birthday over for another year.  I'm 48 now.  I can't quite wrap my head around it.  Forty eight.  Where did all the years go?