it's my birthday, I'll reminisce if I want to

It's my birthday today, and I'm inching towards being old.  Not there yet, but it's definitely getting closer (as I was so kindly reminded of a few minutes ago by a co-worker).  I was laying in bed last night contemplating how much I've changed and how much I have yet to accomplish in my life, and I got ridiculously excited.  Growing up and having new experiences is just too fun!

When I was little, I would similarly stay up the night before my birthday thinking about my life.  The typical result was "I don't want to grow up and get old!  I don't want to die!"  I was very melodramatic, I'll give you that, but I had an inexplicable fear of growing old and running out of time.  My solution was to stay awake all night the night before to postpone the oncoming of another year of my life.  In my juvenile mind, such an action would truly offset the coming of another day.  Obviously, it never worked out that way.  

Other things  I remember about birthdays:

• early morning scavenger hunts for my new birthday outfit
• sugar cookies up the wazoo that my mum decorated for me to take to school
• calls from the Wells family*
• all sorts of silly variations on birthday songs
• feeling like a princess for a day; it was awesome
• going on fun outings catered to what I wanted to do 
• getting to sit in the front seat of the car

*This still happens, and already happened this morning.  The day just doesn't seem complete without a call from my surrogate parents.