Happy birthday to me!? - Erin Zarro

Today is my forty-fourth birthday. Forty-four years in this world.

Feels like forever, but it also feels like a blink. Why does time seem to go by faster as we age? There's a theory that if you're ten, for an example, one year is one tenth of your life — so it seems to go by slower. But once you hit, say, forty, one year is one fortieth of your life — a smaller piece of time, so it goes by faster. I'm not sure if that's the reason, but it is an interesting idea.

The thing about being born today is that I'm on the cusp of winter and spring. So, more often than not, the weather isn't so great. I love spring, when the world wakes up from its long slumber. The snow melts, flowers bloom, and birds fly overhead. It's a magical time.

I'm an Aries. Very typically Aries — passionate, fiery, a leader, not a follower. Sometimes I think the fire of my birth sign is actually within me because I can get very passionate and I can burn hotter than the sun when I'm angry. I actually have a phobia/fascination with fire that has intrigued me for years. I can't strike a match, but fire finds its way into my stories. Maybe I was burned in a past life? I've got huge birthmark running from my feet to my thigh and from my shoulder to my hand on the left side only. Things to ponder.

Another interesting fact about me is that I was actually due on my grandmother's birthday, April 12. What makes this truly amazing is that she and I have so much in common — she was a writer/poet, she was chronically ill, and she and I have some of the same personality traits. She passed when I was eleven, so I didn't know her as well as I wish I did, but I still feel a very strong connection to her, even now.

So today we're taking our cat to the vet to get fluids. We've been trying for eight weeks with limited success. Yesterday was impossible. The vet will take her out of the car and bring her back after, so it's pretty low risk. I feel like we failed. :( But truly, she's so damn feisty, even for a senior cat.





We ate French toast for brunch. And I am making one of my favorite meals from childhood, a chicken casserole. My actual party will be at a later date, which is fine.

I'm not really feeling it this year, to be honest, with all of the upheaval going on. It feels like just another day. I'm sure ten years from now I'll remember this as my most memorable birthday, during the "plague of 2020," but not with fondness. I'm still scared, and my nerves are shot. But I am happy to be alive and relatively healthy. And that's a good thing.

I really don't know what to do with myself. I will probably try to write something. That's even been hard. And maybe play Guild Wars and hang with the family. I am grateful to have family to hang with. Some people are stuck home alone. I am grateful to have a cat who I love so much. Even though she's feisty AF.

So, um, happy birthday to me? I made it another year. Yay.