Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!

Today is the birthday of my friend, Jen, with whom I have over the past twenty years created memories of Wigfest, learning to play poker (out of a book - because that's how you roll when you're born to be mild), enduring the deaths of our fathers, pronking, singing "why why why Delilah" at the dinner table, countless road trips ending at seedy hotels (often because having to pee really badly impared our judgement - remember the Santa Ana Sniper Arms or the seedy hotel with the vibrating beds in Yuba City?) and heart to heart talks about just the sorts of things good friends talk about. She and her sister are still among the few people who can make me laugh so hard that the nerve behind the back of my ear starts to hurt. Everyone should have at least a few people like that in her life.

Over the years, Jen and her family have become like family to me (which is a good thing, because, just between you and me, some of my biological family members bear a more than passing resemblance to Cletus the slack-jawed yokel). Thinking back to when we met in a History of Western Civilization class as when we were both starting college (remember the instructor with his Hitler mustache and penchant for sighing and muttering things like "they told me never to teach at a community college" as he stood at the lectern?), I think Jen and I got along so well from the moment we met, because (as we would later learn) our crazy overlaps in so many ways. She is just a few days short of being exactly three months younger than me, which means that I am older, wiser, more experienced, and therefore able to dispense useful advice on everything from love to how awesome she doesn't realize she is to penning indignant and harshly worded "how dare you!" letters. Get to know me! I'm very helpful that way.

So, Jen, have a very Happy Birthday!!!! and here are some words from ee cummings to put in your "Just say yes!" file:

Thank you God for this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is inifinite which is yes

May this new year bring you an abundance - nay, even a superabundance - of YES!