Birthday week

My birthday is coming up on Thursday this week. Normally I look forward to my birthday because I get lots of attention and happy thoughts and stuff but this year I'm just not feeling it. In past years my mom has called me to wish me happy birthday... even after my dad died, she would call. But she won't be calling me this year and I find that I'm having a hard time with that.

A lot of the time I can sort of pretend that my mom is still living in Edmonton and that she's not dead. After all, the routines of my daily life are the same regardless of whether my mother is alive. But times like this, when I'd expect to be talking to her, make me fully realize that she's gone. And that leaves me feeling very, very sad. And missing her tremendously.

Ian says that if she did call me this year that it would be scary. He does have a point. Personally, I think it would be both scary and awesome if she did call because it would prove to me that there's some kind of life after death. I'd be ok with that.

We went out for dinner tonight to celebrate my birthday a bit early. We're going out for dinner with friends on Friday night and I didn't want to go out for dinner two nights in a row. While there I was playing with a long scarf I've been wearing around my neck. I've tried to wear it like other people do but it just doesn't look right to me so I got this idea that I wanted to wear it knotted like a men's tie. The trouble was that I didn't know how to tie a tie. So Ian taught me how to tie a full Windsor knot. I'm very happy with it... I'll think of it as a little present to myself.