The Birthday Girl

Today, she is my birthday. Which means...I can do anything I want! And I just want to share some favorite photos from near and far and long ago and yesterday...

This is my puffy man, Madison.

I loved this day, spent with a special friend. He took me to a place I never would have found by myself and it was so serene.

This is *long* ago, like 35 years ago. Me and my girlfriend being silly on the ponies. I don't know why I'm making the goofy face (photo left), but our times at the barn were always fun.

Me and my first horse, Elmer J. Fudd (Millionaire. He owned a mansion and a yacht).

Me and my baby. And donuts. 

Nice glasses, Bettye from the past. Nice. Giant. Glasses.

Me and a llama :-)

My mother and me when I was just a wee one.

My boy, just in from a blizzard, with his most sincere face.

My beautiful baby.

Spring.

My baby Katie, Leroy, Robbie (aka The Boy-os), and my ex-husband. When he had big hair.

Fleurs on my desk at work.

Tiny Jane in the packing peanuts. She loved diving in and swimming through them. 

She kinda looks like one of those blow-up alien dolls, right??

My best girl and my best boy.

Sweet Katie 

Mommy & Daddy

Spring at Planting Fields Arboretum

My beautiful New York City

All photos by me. Unless I'm in them. And then I don't know.

Happy Birthday to me. I'm off to have a fun day. 

Happy Birthday to ME!!!

      

I *LOVE* my birthday. Always have, always will. From an early age and my parents throwing little backyard parties for friends and classmates...to my teens and early-twenties when close friends and boyfriends would do things to make it special...to my daughter having surprises ready and waiting for me when I got home from work......to a sort of dry spell...daughter had left for college, I'd moved to a new location, didn't have a "significant other" type person, family all far away...so there were a few "pity party" years...but...I have moved along...made new friends, have some lovely people in my life...a whole gaggle of children from one of the classrooms, herded in by their teachers, brought me a bunch of handmade birthday cards - LOVE them!  Too sweet. I'm feeling the love!

A *special friend* took me out for birthday dinner, which was an unexpected but so lovely surprise. Some nice Italian food and red wine over candlelight...a charming and attentive companion...it was just the right amount of romantic...it made me feel special and my *special day* acknowledged.

I took a couple pictures during the day w my cell phone of gifts and cards from work...but realized after I got home last night that I had failed to get "the money shot," which would have been the tiramisu complete w birthday candle. At first I was disappointed, I rarely miss a shot like that, but then I thought...that really shows how good the company was, that my normal "where's the photo opp" mind didn't even *think* of picking up the phone for a picture!

Here's to another year....Happy Birthday to Me. 

memreeeez

Feeling a little melancholy this week. When I was young, and I mean, from the time I was 5 til was 20...every year me and my family would spend a week in Ocean City, Maryland. We always stayed at the same hotel right on the beach. It wasn't the biggest, the newest, or the fanciest...but after so many years it felt like home.

I can still see the passage of my youth right on that beach in my mind's eye...from riding my father's shoulders in the surf when I was still too little to navigate the sea on my own...to playing "Misty of Chincoteague," by "trotting" back and forth at the water's edge, neighing for my herd-mates still across the channel (my poor parents must have been mortified). Later, wave-surfing on tummy-chafing rough rented rafts...and even later...meeting boys in beach bars and making out with them on the sand.

We always went the last week of summer, leaving right after Labor Day - so we would be there for my birthday and I always got to pick the restaurant for that night - usually a crab shack with paper tablecloths and little wooden mallets to smash crab claws with, followed by carnival rides on the boardwalk and cotton candy.

I have a significant birthday coming up this weekend...and it has me thinking about birthdays past and being with family...and our vacations at the beach. And missing them both.

These pictures remind me of those times....