He ATE his own children

It was my birthday on Tuesday. I am now an apparently astonishing 28 years old (astonishing to my parents, that is, I'm pretty well aware of my own existence). There are some interesting facts about turning 28 that I've only recently found out. First, it takes 7 years for every cell in your body to regenerate, so I am now a completely physically different person from when I was 21, and 2 different people from when I was 14. Second, it takes 28 years for Saturn to orbit the earth. Apparently this Saturn business is a sign of upheaval; one of my friends advised me that in Roman mythology Saturn ate his own children, so, you can imagine I'm not exactly feeling enthusiastic about my situation here. 27 was chaotic enough thankyouverymuch!

I'm hoping Saturn got all it's child-eating rage out on me already, you know, like over the past 28 years. Hmm, maybe Saturn's been chasing me around eating his kids for the past 28 years and now that he's come full circle and all the kids are ate up he doesn't have any reason to ride my ass. A girl can hope!

For a long time I saw birthdays more as a time to duck for cover than a time to celebrate. But since striking it out on my own in a new hemisphere I've been choosing to celebrate instead of hide. The past 2 years I've organised something, and while that's been fun, I wasn't up for it this year. I was hemming and hawing about what to do for my birthday when the solution came to me: an invitation to a 30th birthday party the weekend before my birthday, and Orlando (a monthly queer night at a nearby pub) the weekend after.

The 30th birthday involved a theme: create a matching outfit. So when I read that I right away thought of those horrible matching track suits (the ones in my imagination were pink velour and I nearly barfed) and I knew I was in for a good time. I'm not a fan of, in fact I am avidly against, the matching suit set look so I really had no idea what to wear. Then it dawned on me: POLKA DOTS! I have an amazing polka dot dress, and, in the course of moving office I rediscovered my polka dot shoes (which are, by far, the most amazing polka dot shoes to ever exist), and I was sorted! I rummaged through my stacks of accessories and pulled out everything spotted until I had the perfect polka dot look.

Since 30 is a pretty big deal, I didn't want to show up for the party empty handed. But being a poor student, splashing out on a present wasn't exactly in the budget. And then I had a moment of creative genius: Smarties cookies!

These cookies were doubly ingenious (in my mind anyways) because they are polka dot cookies, and because the party was for one of the admin staff at my campus, who has to put up with all us smart arse academics all day. Smarties...Smart Arses...get it?

The party was heaps of fun. It was a house party out in Northcote, which I was pleasantly surprised to discover is actually not insanely far from Brunswick. I won't go into the details, but, I ended up drinking half a bottle of rum, showing everyone my underwear (which, thank god, had polka dots), dancing, playing the piano terribly, and sitting out by the fire well past the wee hours of the morning and nearly into the regular hours of the morning. I got home around 5am, picked up a really nasty cough, and nearly died from the brightness of the sun when I crawled out of my bedroom-pit the next morning.

I've spent most of the past week with a nasty cold from this party, but I have no regrets. And I was hardly going to let a little thing like possibly needing medical attention stop me from going out on Friday night again! And again, I have no regrets, Orlando was a hoot! It was one of those nights that was either going to really suck, or be really awesome. It was really awesome. Well, for me. I didn't run into exes or crazy stalker ladies, though I did make a woman in the toilet intensely uncomfortable... Ah, good times, good times.

Maybe Saturn is done harassing me after all. Maybe it's time to just sit back and enjoy the sunshine.