I just had the best birthday of my life. 

My birthday is on December 26th, which is kind of a crappy day to be born. No one, including me, feels like doing anything or eating anything. But since it’s my birthday we all feel compelled to CELEBRATE! even though everyone is bloated and exhausted from the previous day’s events. By this point in my life I have accepted the way things are and honestly as long as I have a cake that no one feels like eating, I’m happy. 

Cake.

The reason why I have to have a cake is because my mother was always very sensitive about separating my birthday from Christmas and she always made sure I had a birthday cake. No matter where we were, I had cake. We traveled all over the place when I was growing up: I turned 6 in Gaitlinburg, 13 in San Antonio, 16 in New York City. And my mother always made sure I had cake. Now that I have a family of my own, she has started calling Husband and making sure one of them is going to make me one. I don’t know if he realizes how sad I would be if I didn’t have a cake. I think there may have been a few birthdays since we got married that I didn’t have one, and I have pretty much just blocked them out.

Turning 34.

I do not care about turning 34. It’s not a milestone birthday and I feel young so it doesn’t bother me that I’m officially, I suppose, in my “mid-thirties.” Bring it. I love being in my 30’s. I have found this time in my life to be extremely liberating. Over time I have learned how to unapologetically embrace all the things and the people that truly make me happy.

This year, I really don’t know what got into everyone, but it was amazing. I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD TALK IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT WAS SO AWESOME. ON CHRISTMAS EVE (okay, I’ll stop talking in all caps only because it’s hard to read, not because what I am about to tell you isn’t superbly exciting), Husband surprised me with a very thoughtful card that I plan to laminate and look at when he starts to piss me off. It basically said I am so amazing that nothing he saw in the stores was good enough. Well, I won’t argue with him there, unless he went to Tiffany, in which case I would think he could manage to find something that would work. 

Anyway, what he wanted to give me was time. Time to myself and time to relax.

Then he explained that he got his mom to take the kids for the entire day (bless her heart … wait, no, that deserves all caps … BLESS HER HEART) and he was sending me to a spa for six hours while a cleaning crew deep-cleaned my house. 

Wait, What?

I remember him talking and my mouth falling open at the “all day with no kids” part, and then when he said I was going to the spa for six hours, roughly the same number of hours I sleep at night, I think I went into some kind of shock, and then the thing about the cleaning service just sent me over the edge … which is when I started this weird medley of laughing and crying. He also gave me a nice bottle of wine in my stocking, bringing me to the conclusion that I pretty much won Christmas.

My parents delivered a homemade cake to me on the morning of my birthday. I got a new hat. I breakfasted with an old friend. I had a few mimosas and a lady named Olga scrubbed my whole body with exfoliant. I could go ON AND ON, BECAUSE OMG IT WAS SO LUXURIOUS AND AMAZING AND THEN I CAME HOME TO A HOUSE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN CLEANER. EVER. 

Documentation. 

When I worked for State Farm as a claims adjuster we always asked for “documentation” to prove that an event actually happened. So … here’s mine.

New hat + my kids.

A king cake really can fix a lot of problems. Really. This is me with my dear old friend Kari.

Bliss.

My fingernails are painted. That NEVER HAPPENS.

In Conclusion … 

I wrote this so I can remember The Day That Rocked.

We’re not a super mushy couple, but Husband is absolutely the air that I breathe. Not just because he did this for me, but because he just knew what I needed. All of the times that I feel like he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t understand my feelings … well, he doesn’t. Not really. But when it comes down to it, he knows me better than I know myself sometimes. 

Also, after 10 years of holidays together, he has learned not to say a word about my hot pink tights.