Today is my birthday. I am 42 years old. Woot woot!

I told myself yesterday that I was going to use this day to celebrate myself. I baked myself a cake! And truly, what else do I need for my birthday?! So there’s a pandemic that has cancelled life in Pasadena. But that’s okay! I have my fabulous mindset! I can just rise over the circumstances because I have grown so much this past year, blah blah blah.

Yeah. Fuck all that shit I thought yesterday. Pandemic birthdays suuuuuuck soooooo muuuuuuch.

It’s a Tuesday. If this had been a non-pandemic year, I would have taken my children to school, done some writing, and then gotten myself a massage. Maybe I would have met some friends or my parents for lunch. On the weekend, I would go to my favorite day spa and get a Korean scrub. Then Nathan and I would go out for a fancy dinner, and I would wear the pretty green dress I bought less February, right before Le Shit Hit Le Fan.

Instead, I got a shitty night’s sleep. #ThanksPMS. Then Julian had a big breakdown over Covid-19 and having to wear a mask at preschool. Then I stomped my foot and threw a tantrum, telling my five year old that I did not want to deal with whining on my birthday. That made him cry. A lot. We hugged and made up and I apologized, but wow, what a shit lousy start to my forty-second year on Planet Earth.

I did not get to spend a couple of hours writing because #DistanceLearning.

I did not get a massage because #Pandemic.

I did not have lunch at a restaurant with friends because #DistanceLearningAndPandemic.

Yesterday, I tried to lower my expectations for my birthday because I knew I would be stuck in the distance learning shit hole. But sigh, my birthday has really underscored just how shitty my life is right now. I am doing my best to make the most of a crappy situation but it’s been a long, long time since Pippa’s school closed. I know we are all dealing with the same shittiness. I know my shittiness is better than a lot of people’s shittiness.

But it is still shitty.

However, venting about my feelings — in my journal, to Nathan, to parents at preschool when I picked up Julian, and now in this blog post — has been enormously cathartic. Also, I now fully appreciate why Pippa was devastated when we had to cancel her birthday party last March. I feel grumpy about having a pandemic birthday, and I’m 42! Poor kid, it must suck to have the pandemic crap all over your seventh birthday. And at the rate things are going here in Pasadena, it seems like the pandemic will be taking another dump on her eighth birthday. I had sympathy for her last March, but this March, I will have empathy.

Now please excuse me. There’s a birthday cake I have to go frost.