I'm 43.

My birthday.

For the last few years or so, it's actually made me a bit sad. Or maybe I'm just getting my period.

Here's a rundown of the events today:

• Got up early, picked up my friend and went walking with the Wonder Dog on the beach for two hours.
• Washed the Wonder Dog, changed my clothes.
• Went to the Cuban-Brazilian dance class (where the regular teacher was absent; the class wasn't the same). Showered for the first time at the gym.
• Talked to my well-wishing friend from New York.
• Met two friends for lunch.
• Went to the bakery to buy myself a slice of whatever cake I wanted for my birthday.
• Left the bakery without buying anything. I'm not kicking my own ass exercising to blow it on cake.
• Went home, sewed a little stitch into my dress where it was gaping open and showing my girls to the world.
• Talked to another well-wishing friend from Seattle.
• Picked up my mother at 5 o'clock from her job.
• Went to dinner with mother at 5:15 (you know these old folks... they like to eat early).
• Came home.
• Checked my blog...realized nobody is interested in the songs on my Ipod.
• Wrote this post.

Nights like these are the ones that get to me. I don't have a group of friends to just hang with, to go out for a drink with. I don't have a significant other to surprise me with some little card on the dining room table.

Remember when your birthday meant a party and goody bags, and inviting Richard Thompson, the creepy kid down the street because your mother said it was bad manners to invite everyone else but him? Pin the tail on the donkey, and my mother's angel food cake which wasn't my favorite but was her specialty so we ate it anyway? Duck duck goose, and prizes and Pinatas.

Oh man, Pinatas. Remember those? (I don't know how to get the Tilda on the "n" in Pinata, so forgive me please.)

Being the one who broke the Pinata sucked because you were blindfolded. You were always a beat behind the other kids who could see the loot before you did when it was scattered on the floor. I would always fake at hitting the pinata when it was my turn.

One time, next door? At Jessie Goode's party? There was the usual requisite candy in the happy face-shaped Pinata, but also two round wooden tokens. If you got one of them, you won an extra prize.

Well, when Jimmy smashed it open, I threw my body down. I mean I covered every bit of the bounty of sweets on the patio floor. When I came up for air, I had about 80% of the sweet tarts and butterscotch disks... but more importantly, I had both of the tokens.

Mrs. Goode first shamed me for being greedy.

Then she made me give one of my tokens to Jimmy.

I wasn't always the most charming of young ladies.