Forty, plus one more...

As usual, it's time once again for my annual birthday post.

Oh, who am I kidding?  I'm so far behind in posting anything, I'll be surprised if one person reads this.

41. They say after 40, life just keeps getting better and better.  At this point I really feel like grabbing whomever "they" are and knocking them on their butts because from my viewpoint, they really don't know jack-bupkus about what happens after 40.

But let's start our little tale on Monday night, the 24th, the night before my birthday.  I've not been keeping everyone up on what's been happening with me, so let's do a quick catch-up before we start in on the disaster that started at 7:40 on Monday night.

The semester at school has started (and at writing that I do a facepalm knowing that I didn't do the semester preview like I usually do).  I'm taking Philosophy 102, COM 216, and Journalism 447 and 484.  But, the semester started out as a disaster as well because on top of the six jobs I'm doing at work (Ad/PR, Asset Management, Shop Management, Quality Assurance, Head of Asset Creation and World Concept Design), I've had to take care of Ace and his son full time.  I'm not sure but I'm pretty positive that creating whole worlds out of my imagination is a tough job, add the other five and breathing gets pretty tough, add on 12 credit hours and two men who have absolutely no concept how much harder they're making your life as they ungratefully suck your soul out and give nothing back in return? It just equals one giant disaster that I'm not even sure that Mother Theresa or Gandhi could see their way clear to forgive.

So, just out of sheer exhaustion I've been missing classes, falling asleep during them, I've got my teams at work looking at me for answers I don't have time to give and one concept artist who I can't trust to do a single drawing without describing it to him word for word even though I've described it all in great detail in I don't know how many e-mails.

But then, I 'm expected, without even a consideration to how rough my world has become, to neglect my home, my life, my work and my studies for a man and his son who have no idea how to give anything back other than more stress, more heartache and just more and more trouble. I guess it was all summed up in my birthday card I received from the both of them that LITERALLY read:

"Hope you like the card, I pulled it out of my ass." 

Yep, that's how my day started, with me passing out on my couch out of sheer exhaustion Monday night only to open my door at 7:40 p.m. and have Ace tell me he had nothing planned on top of the fact that if I wanted to do anything, I'd have to pay for it myself and a card that read that he had no other consideration for me than that.  Of course the other card that came with it was written by Hallmark with an intelligible scrawl for a a signature that left me wondering who it was from.  No personalization, no nothing, just some scrawl attached to "oh how I'm so lucky to have you," oh yes, sure, he's lucky enough to have me around to shit on.  Gee thanks.  He actually had the audacity and nerve to sit there and tell me that the "card pulled out of his ass" was something he thought I would think was funny.  I can't even sit and think about it without wanting to throw something.

At that point, I just threw him out.  I couldn't take anymore.  If I was expected to take humiliation after humiliation, neglect after neglect then pay for his dinner too?  No.  Enough was enough.  He needed to go.

After all that, I got on the phone with KP, told him what happened and when midnight hit, KP and I were headlong into the latest WoW expansion Mists of Pandaria together.  Just like four years ago when I thought the world had ended, there was KP, as always backing me up.  We created two new pandas, mine by the name of Choppiestick and his by the name of Slapyouface.  At that point I was so grateful to hear the voices of KP, TJ, Drewbie and Kai, I didn't realize how much I had missed by wasting the last year on Ace.

While we were leveling our new pandas, KP and I discussed the last year and how Ace was just my way of bouncing back after my ex bailed out with the Bassett Hound Faced Bitch, and how it was important for me to know that being alone wasn't the end of the world, after all I did wait two years before even trying a relationship on for size.

At about 2 a.m. I passed back out again, happy that I could spend the beginning of my day with the one guy who's been with me and EXTREMELY supportive come hell or high water for the last five years.

The next morning, I woke up on my couch and opened my laptop to find out that one of my best pals, a woman named Darla Lamb had been killed in a car wreck, the exact same moment Ace walked in my door the night before.  While I was being insulted by a card pulled out of his ass, Darla, in a moment of despair  drove her Toyota RAV4 head-on into a Semi and died on the way to the hospital.

So let's count it up shall we?  I've got a boyfriend who treats me like shit and then one of my close friends drives her car into a semi, oh and on top of that, it's my birthday.  I've got no support nearby, I call my mother and she tells me I need to be strong, but then, oh, let's just light the candle on top of this whole thing when my boss tells me I can't buckle under all of it, that I have to remain strong for everyone else.

Meanwhile, everyone's knocking down my door for answers, e-mail addresses, and everything else that I'm just supposed to keep churning out without an ounce of support, no help and the one guy that could give me an ounce of relief 2500 miles away.

It's hard not to sit here and cry inconsolably, it's almost impossible to breathe but at least I found joy in one thing:

I took myself to Spago.  This year, they made sure to have a coconut Cremé Bruleé waiting for me, along with my glass of champagne.  Peter was even nice enough to make me a chocolate orange shot.

So, if anyone is reading, which I doubt, if you feel like trying to repair my birthday in some way shape or form, keep that jerk Ace away from me and someone put together a little package that sends me to Hawaii for a week, just so I can say hi to KP.

And that was 41.  By far the worst birthday I've ever had.