Today is My Birthday

It's the Birthday curse.  I have seriously disliked my Birthday since the age of 11.  On my 11th birthday I got pretty angry at my little sister, Lizzie, for something, I can't remember what now, but I was so angry at the time I punched her.  She was only 5 or 6 and I socked her pretty hard so my mom grounded me.  I'm sure I deserved to be grounded, but at the time I thought this was totally unfair.  I thought on my birthday I could do no wrong.  I'm not even sure I did actually get grounded, because my parents were never really good at the grounding follow through.  But they did tell me I was grounded and it probably lasted 2 hours max.  But that day I decided birthdays sucked.

As a kid I also hated what I like to call the "double whammy".  The double whammy occurs when your birthday is near Christmas (or perhaps Hanukkah if your Jewish).  I'm sure all you Christmas babies can relate to this one.  A double whammy involves you getting one present for two occasions.  On the card of the gift there will probably be a message that reads something along the lines of, "Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday!"  Um hello they are two different gift giving occasions requiring two separate presents for my spoiled brat self.  It's not like your killing two birds with one stone here.

When I got to highschool I hated them because of this silly tradition at St. Ursula, my all girls Catholic high school.  On someone's birthday all their friends would get them a balloon and tie it to their back pack.  The popular girls looked like that French kid at the end of The Red Balloon (check out this picture if you don't know what I'm referring to).  Anyways, while I had plenty of friends in high school and I did have balloons I always felt self-conscience about the number of balloons I had... lets just say I wasn't in any danger of floating away.  Then on my 16th birthday I got a package just the right size to hold car keys.  My parents joked that maybe there were car keys inside.  As I opened it I envisaged the car my parents must have bought me sitting in the drive-way.  In the box... just a key chain.  I blame the fact that I went to school with girls who actually got cars for their birthdays for my lofty assumptions, but I was definitely shattered about that stupid key chain - like seriously what good is a key chain if you have no CAR KEYS for it?

I hated my birthdays in college for the simple reason that they always occurred during finals week.  No one including myself ever had time to celebrate them.

That brings me to this year's birthday.  Today is my first day of unemployment since starting my job.  I'm not sure whether I technically quit or was let go, but I'm currently jobless.  I took the job based on the hours they told me I'd need to work, and during my interview discussed with them that I'd need to get the tube both to and from work (important because the tube runs silly hours).  Anyways, they now want me to work past the time I could get the last train home.  Since I'm unwilling to take the hour and a half journey home transferring between 3 sketchy buses when I would leave work at 1 am or later they said I can't work there anymore. I'm pretty appalled at the way they have treated me and other employees, and this just epitomizes the poor management they've been doing since the beginning.  But I guess I'm better off without them.

On a positive note, I'll have more time to look for a real grown up person job, and until I find one I'm back to being a housewife.  I'm sure you can expect some baked goods posts in the next couple days since I'll be eating my feelings.