You say it's your birthday...

It's my birthday!

I say with excitement. Feel the excitement implied by the exclamation point?

No? Me either.

It's just so overused, maybe that's why it doesn't look as exciting as it should. I think that I shouldn't blame the misfortunate punctuation mark though. I think there are other reasons. My personal punctuation symbol lately would have to be a question mark, although talk about overuse. Something to convey the appropriate level of ambivalence between extreme motivation, spurts of effort, and a creeping desire to curl up in a ball. Fortunately, the former two tend to outweigh the latter one. But sometimes it is difficult. Maybe a better choice would be a dash - There' s the incompleteness, the sense of something to come that I definitely feel these days. A dash it is then.

The party was excellent. Many folks from different areas showed up....mostly from my department but my sister came down and my best friend Ruth came up. A woman from linguistics, and my friend TM's non-school associated boyfriend also came, diversifying the department only crowd a little more. It was good. Most everyone wore party hats, which was wonderful because you just can't take yourself too seriously in a hello kitty birthday hat. We had tons of good food (artichoke dip from my lab mate, apple pies courtesy of my sister, and extremely good chocolate mousse cake), delicious sangria, mini umbrella toothpicks, squirt guns, and art. We made a collage (it's still in progress) and got high on turpentine fumes from the large hand painted birthday card. Also a work in progress. A, who hosted, says he'll keep some of this up for us to continue to work on. I'll scan them when they're done. Or done enough.

And just when the party was breaking up, I got cramps, and then my period. Not due yet, but hey, it just had to come. At least it had the decency to wait until most of the guests had left. The sangria was extremely helpful for the pain, as were the sesame noodles with fresh ginger that I had made earlier that day.

Sesame noodles:
(guessing on the amounts...I don't cook with measurements usually)
1/8 ? cup sesame oil
1/2 cup olive oil (or vegetable oil)
1 Tbsp natural creamy peanut butter
3 Tbsp soy sauce
2 ? Tsp lemon juice
A dash of ground cayenne pepper
two cloves of garlic (minced)
1 inch fresh ginger root (peeled and diced)
Toasted sesame seeds

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl (or tupperware). Boil 1 pound of spaghetti. Drain, rinse, and toss with the mix in the bowl. I also sauteed some red peppers and a little bit of diced onion with a bit of the sauce mix and added it to the noodles. It was very very good and pretty easy to make. Really, you should use tahini paste instead of peanut butter but I don't keep tahini paste on hand since I rarely use it. The peanut butter was a good substitute.

Now I'm doing homework (crimeny....you'd think I'd be done with that stage of my education) and should at least look at my paper. But I think I'll most likely just get the homework done and watch movies with A when he gets back from his parent's house.

No calls from my ex, T. My brother T called today to say he's feeling too sick to drive the two hours. I really do understand that since the Lyme left me pretty much not able to do long drives also. He's thinking of coming down next weekend. In the meantime, he's had a shit load of bloodwork done to see what's going on with the intense fatigue he's been experiencing. I know it could just be AIDS. God, what a horrible way to put it. It's just AIDS. He's been HIV positive since 1997, but has so far managed to keep his virus low and T cells high. This summer was taxing, and he's been slipping steadily each year. I know this is exaccerbated by his occasionally not terribly healthy lifestyle. Crystal meth is just horrible, and that was his party drug of choice for a long long time. He's been off it for a while, but not long enough that I don't worry when I don't hear from him for lengthy periods.

This is a topic best left for another post, not that it doesn't warrant addressing but because it does warrant a lengthier discussion than I'm up for right now. I'm planning on keeping in close contact with him this week to find out what is going on health-wise. I hope he takes care of himself. He's back with the asshole boyfriend and while I know he wants this, I also know it is another stresser as the guy really is a dick. So I am pretty concerned about him right now and I want to be supportive without being judgmental about the dick. Not an easy path to be on. I wish he could find someone great. He's got a lot to offer to the right guy and it makes me angry to see the wrong guy taking T's love and not appreciating it.

Time to go eat some pie and take some more pain meds so I can get through the night not curled up in a ball. Pie is good for a lot of things. And I don't care what my sister says. it IS good pie.