Starting With Dennys

Oooooh, look. It's the all new revamped Blogger Meets Google interface. The font is suddenly larger. The HTML isn't showing. The little options have changed. And whoa, dude, we have tags! Yay, tags! Tags good.

Meanwhile. Let us move on to the actual post of the day, because today is the day that marks 15 years since my last (and pretty much definitely Last, failing some really strange turn of events that I cannot possibly imagine) foray through Labor & Delivery. 15 years ago today, the midwife told me to have a glass of wine and relax, because I wasn't dilating very fast. It was a Sunday in Baltimore and in an effort to be helpful, my husband tore off to get wine. He came back with all he could find given blue laws: some pink, fizzy stuff. Really pink, really fizzy. I had a glass of it anyway - it tasted like alcoholic fizzy bubblegum - and took a bath. When I stood up, water gushed out. "OMG," I said (well, not literally. OMG hadn't been invented yet.) "My water broke; we need to get to the hospital."
"Are you sure?" said my clueless SO. "I mean, uh, doesn't it do that every time you stand up out of a bath?"
If I hadn't of been in labor I would have fallen over laughing. "I've been a girl all my life," I said, "It doesn't work like a suction pump."

So that was 15 years ago, and the small product of that day, who has grown a bit in the last decade and a half, wanted breakfast at Denny's, which is an unusual but entertaining way to start the day. I got him a top hat and some World of Warcraft gold, which is the other thing he wanted so that he can, and I quote, twink his character up and make other players feel bad about themselves. Then when I came home from work I made a cake and we ordered Thai food delivered from Blue Ridge To Go, which I must say is the most extremely coolest slick thing in Asheville that I had never tried before. Then we watched Barbarella, because we're just weird like that and then he went off with his friends while I stayed home to smoke cinnamon sticks. (no, I don't light them. They're my new, healthy cigarette-like friends. Shut UP. Five days, 22 hours, 26 minutes and 8 seconds. 59 cigarettes not smoked, saving $11.87. Life saved: 4 hours, 55 minutes.)

It's been a long strange 15 years and the whole birthday thing has made me muse rather philosophically on the meaning of life and what a good thing it is that we can't foretell the future. It's also reminded me that we really can't foretell the future: no matter how bleak and dreary and neverending today may seem, almost anything could happen tomorrow. Yes. Yes it could. A large anvil marked Acme might fall on your head or you could end up living in Asheville with no husband and a house full of teenagers. So have hope. Suicide is pointless. Things change. And kids grow up surprisingly fast.