Okay. So I requested next Thursday evening off from work in order to observe my birthday. They gave me the whole day. I also requested off Easter for my grandmother's birthday party, and Saturday evening in order to get home for Easter and said birthday party. What I got was two shifts on Monday, one shift on Tuesday and a morning shift on Good Friday.

See the trend? No money shifts. I work at a seafood restaurant and live in an area that is highly populated with those who cannot eat the flesh of anything that lives on land on Good Friday. I needed two Good Friday shifts, and a few more shifts altogether. But this has been happening a lot lately. I have been getting mostly early in the week, daytime shifts, because nobody else really wants to work those. By the end of the week, I am too close to overtime to take any good money shifts. I try to pick them up, but then on Sunday (which is day 7 of the RL workweek), I am listed as an extra and sent home after lunch, or early into dinner.

But because I have very few shifts next week, I agreed to pick up Courtney's Thursday evening. It kept nagging at me that I couldn't take that shift, but I could not for the life of my figure out why. I had to look at a calendar inorder to remember why I had Thursday off--I forgot my own birthday! I explained this to Courtney. She said not to bother. But I had to bother at this point, because somehow it seemed so important to her. She finally explained that her nine-year-old brother is having surgery that day. So I figure that I was gonna be 27 on that day no matter where I was, and I need the money. So I am now working on the night of my birthday.

Then I got home from work and my younger sister Laura had left a message for me. She and her husband were not coming up for a dinner of waffles to christen the waffle iron I got for Christmas. And Kenn did not get home from work until after ten o'clock. When he got home, he fixed light dinner, and I finally had my waffles. I had anticipated that it would not be the same-- but it was.

Kenn put in Fandango, and I watched an early Kevin Costner flick and ate waffles. My mom told me that you know you're a grown-up when you have to work on your birthday. But this is tough news to swallow coming from a teacher whose birthday is in early August. Not that she has never had to work on her birthday-- but aside from the one or two summers that she has had a second job, she's been in the clear for the last twenty plus years. At least when it comes to working outside the home on her birthday.

But, as I have always done, I have made My New Year's Resolutions in celebration of the coming next year of me. And I will still have my birthday morning-- a little ritual of getting up early, working out and eating breakfast and doing my devotions that Starts my new year off right. After all, we weren't all born on New Year's Day, so not all of year's are bright, shiny and new on the first of the year. My life began on April 8, at 12:18 am (I was due on April 7), and so a full year has not elapsed for me until such day

This year I think I'll have lemon-poppyseed muffins and take up jogging-- but I'll also do pilates. I will finish my screenplays and make at least one film this year-- and I'll finish my book. I will read all of C.S. Lewis' apologetics, too.

Last but not least, I'll get health insurance, life insurance and be admitted to the bar--whether this month or in October, PA or WV-- I will do it.

I will remain, however, in the true spirit of Fandango and the crow's feet just waiting to appear on my face-- a Whiter shade of Pale. Pass the sunscreen and calcium supplements-- It's time to make up for past laziness and finally accomplish something besides schoolwork.