Tikkabik

This time of year always throws me for a loop, and the holidays are only partly to blame. Parent-teacher conferences, end of the year expenses and logistics, preperation for Macworld Expo and various and sundry other inconveniences of modern life inevitably come together in a December tsunami that threatens to bury me ever year.

My birthday is tomorrow, and in recent years it's become more of an inconvenience than something to look forward to. It's not that I mind getting older; I don't. And now safely entrenched in my mid-30s, I feel like I'm starting to figure some shit out that I haven't to up until now -- not to say that I'm able to do much with the knowledge, but at least it's there.

So it's not the aging part that makes me not look forward to my birthday -- it's the expectation that we're going to do something on it or near it to "celebrate it." I don't really care about getting presents on my birthday, and I definitely don't want a party. I even feel like a "birthday meal" is too much of an inconvenience to deal with, and to that end, I'm just talking about figuring out what I want to eat, not actually cook it.

Though this mocha cake recipe that's been kicking around my family for years is a tradition that I really like. Mom's already promised to make one for me, so that's good.

Maybe I'm just at a particularly low ebb this year because I'm getting over this goddamn flu that has kicked the shit out of me. Shrug.