"It's My Birthday..."

"and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to, you would cry too if it happened to you." I have no idea why I've been singing that song all morning. Yes, it's my birthday, but I don't really feel like crying. In fact I'm in a rather good mood. The weather is beautiful - it's supposed to be 70 and sunny, I took the kids to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, and Debby is coming over tonight to babysit so that Trevor and I can go to The Crab Shanty for dinner. I plan on splurging - it is my birthday afterall! I guess another song I could sing is "It's my birthday, shake my booty!" Both very popular songs in this house on birthdays. I know - pretty demented!

Anyway... I've been thinking about some of my more memorable birthdays and here are the top 3.

1) 1992 - I had a birthday party at my house to celebrate my 18th. Over the previous few months I had developed a crush on Trevor. Little did I know he liked me from the moment we met 5 years earlier. Sometime after midnight Trevor asked me out on our very first date. He asked me to go to the Senior banquet that our church youth group put on every year. We ended up dating four years before we got married so every April 11th we celebrated our anniversary. So I guess tomorrow we'll be together 16 years!

2) 1997 - This was the year that I spent my birthday at the Virginia Dept of Motor Vehicles trying to get my driver's license reinstated in the state of VA. It was also my last day of work at the horrid Textilease. (Another story for another day.) A few months earlier I was driving the company van in Virginia making up a missed delivery for one of the route drivers. I accidentally cut a cop off as I was merging onto the highway. I was dreadfully lost already and at the point of tears. When the cop showed up at my door I started sobbing. He said he pulled me over for cutting him off and asked why I was crying. I told him about my horrid job and how I was lost and had no idea where I was. He told me he wouldn't give me a ticket for cutting him off, but he noticed that the van's registration had expired months before so he gave me a ticket for that. He told me to turn it into my employer and they should take care of it. So that's what I did. About a month later I received a letter in the mail saying that I still needed to pay the fine so I went to Accounts Payable and asked her if they paid it yet. She said yes, most certainly. A few weeks later I got another letter. Again, I went to A/P and she said YES we paid it stop bugging me. A few weeks later I got another letter, this time telling me my license had been suspended for not paying the fine. This time when I went to the girl in A/P I asked her to show me something in writing that shows that they paid the fine. She pulled the file out and found the original check. Apparently, she mailed a copy of the check instead of the original. DUH! So, on my birthday, on my last day of work at that horrid job, I trekked down to Virginia's DMV with a check from Textilease in my hands to clear my name and get my driver's license reinstated in the state of VA!! Not a fun day!

3) 1999 OR 2000 (I can't remember the exact year) - This is the year that I spent in jury duty. The day before I was actually selected to be on a jury. I thought for sure I wouldn't be picked. On April 9th we heard part of the case and then we heard the rest of the case on the 10th. The case was turned over to us in the afternoon. It seemed like a pretty open and shut case. A guy was caught with drugs, large amounts of money and a stolen vehicle. There were witnesses and police and even FBI testimony. So, when we went to the jurors room and took our initial vote I was fairly certain it would be unanimously guilty right off the bat. No such luck! I think the initial vote was 7-5. Then we decided to go around the room and say which way we voted and why. I was shocked when a couple of people said that they just felt bad for the young man and didn't want to see him go to jail even though they thought he was guilty! What really got my goat was that these were some of the people that actually fell asleep during the trial! This was one of the few times in my life that I got pretty aggressive by trying to convince the other jurors of his guilt. I really didn't want to hang around there for hours on my birthday when The Cheesecake Factory and a date with my husband were calling my name. So between me and another guy we eventually convinced everyone of his guilt. It didn't take too long because these people really didn't have any good reasons for finding him innocent.

So, there you have it. My top 3 most memorable birthdays.