A sweet birthday miracle

My feelings for multiple " it's my birthday" posts and public displays of affection are very similar. I don't like either and consider them to be in poor taste. Unless of course i am the lady making out at the laundry mat, then I say " horah! Bring on the slobber!"

Just kidding, dad. I have never kissed a boy in my entire life.

I'm okay with birthday whoring too, as long as I am the one doing the whoring. When September 17th rules around, I can't help but tell anyone with working ears that it is MY day. This year was no exception.

I woke up early to do some grocery shopping before picking up the boyfriend from the airport at 11. I had bought some weekend food, shampoo, and an assortment of household items.

I scanned all of these items through the self check out line and was tickled when I watched the price drop over $11 after scanning my Kroger shopping card. by far my favorite part of shopping.

44 dollars and some forgettable amount of change.

Great.

Opened my purse to get my wallet and it isn't there. I had left it in the car.

Not so great.

I tell the lady supervising the self check out area what had happened and she said I could run to my car to get my wallet and that I wouldn't have to reswipe everything.

Great again.

A cute older man, probably in his late 60s, smiles and jokes that I am no where near old enough to be forgetting things yet.

" I will have you know, I am 25 years old today!"

We both laughed.

I went to my car, got the wallet that I had carelessly forgotten and hurried back to pay for my shampoo.

As I get Into the store, the cashier hands me my bag.

"Thanks, let me just swipe my card" I say and walk to the self check out kiosk.

The lady smiles and said that the older man had paid for my groceries while I was in the car and that he says "happy birthday"

What a way to start a day. Of course it was nice to not pay for $44 of groceries, but the warm fuzzy feeling from the kindness of a stranger will surely stick with me for a while. I need to find a way to pay it forward.

- professional freakshow

Happy birthday, puffy face

It is official. I am old enough to both run for congress and rent a car without the pesky $15 a day underage fee. I wanted to write this post on the actual anniversary of my escape from my mother's womb, but I was busy celebrating.

It is a custom for there to be a party on ones day of birth, and being the traditionalist/ attention whore that I am, I invited my closest friends over to celebrate.

My roommate, Kate and I made an invitation on Facebook. Kate is one of the very few people that I can team write with, but I was pretty pleased by what we came up with.

The invitation read as follows:

"Join us as we celebrate Erin's 25th birthday! If you know Erin, you know that it is no small feat that she has come this far. As concerned roommates, we make her sleep with a helmet in case she falls off the bed and/or gravity decides to reverse itself. She argued at first, stating that she was a "grown-ass-woman" and that the helmet was degrading, but when we offered to paint lightning bolts on the side with glow-in-the-dark puffy paint, she gave the idea her "this is super rad" dance and promptly twisted her two left feet, falling into the sticky bug trap in the basement. Obviously, if this would happen to anyone, it would happen to her. We all remember the time she fell in the parking lot after running for 0.5 seconds and skinned both knees, in an act not dissimilar to a drunk giraffe on roller skates. Then again there was the time she was walking at the airport and stepped onto the wrong moving sidewalk, propelling her backwards into what she describes as, "The closest I've ever come to flying." And let's not forget the time she was attacked by a homeless woman in Seattle who called her out for being a whorey bitch. You know her fondly as the girl who once broke her nose walking into a door... The girl who once tripped in front of a man in a wheelchair and said, "I'm sorry! I can't walk." Her 25th birthday is no small achievement. Come drink with us and watch her stumble. If you're lucky, she might hold on tightly to your hand while yelling, "Let go of me, let go!" or refer to you affectionately as "husband!" for the duration of the evening. Either way, her endearing snort is guaranteed. Hope to see you there!"

Kate also posted fun facts about the birthday girl everyday during the week prior to the party. Those may be posted at a later time, but I will most likely forget.

The party started off smoothly, people brought wine, flowers, hugs, and birthday butt squeezes. My boyfriend had even flown in from Florida to surprise me. Kate made me a punpkin cake with homemade cream cheese frosting. I was so excited that all of my friends were celebrating with me and much like my 8th birthday party, I spent about 50% of the time singing the birthday song to myself and the other 50% looking out the window to see which of my friends was arriving next. This was better than my 8th party though because this time there was vodka in my red kool-aid.

My good friend, Rachelle came at about 11 with a big gift bag in hand. She had made me a mobile made of cloths hangers, ribbons, and 20 airplane sized booze bottles!

At this point in the evenining, I had convinced a man to act as photographer and follow me around with my I phone. I pulled him onto the back porch. To take my picture with hanging mobile. Right after the picture was taken, I was stung by a huge- ass-hornet, right on my eye! I was rushed to the bathroom for inspection and a call to the doctor. I spent the duration of the night in bed with ice on my face.

Kate later posted on the invite:

"Fun fact #7- we had a party. Erin was stung in the eye by a Hornet, forcing her to miss her own damn party. If this could happen to anybody, it obviously happened to her."

- professional freakshow

“HAHA, Gotcha” said God one sunny day.

I cant believe that it has been an entire year since I have started this blog. I wish that I could say that I finished the year posting as regularly as I was in the beginning, but I suppose I can try harder this year. When I started this little freakshow project of mine, I had an embarrassingly shallow social life and it seemed that I didn't have anything better to do than write. In the last year, I have come to terms with the fact that I may be living in VA for a while, formed some great friendships, took up running as a hobby, started applying to graduate schools, and worked diligently at perfecting my art of being the most awkward kid on the block.

I know that I took some time off from writing regularly but I am ready to come back in full swing. I miss the days that I would religiously check for comments and constantly update my pageviews. Thankfully, my fall travel season for work started this week and given that travel chaos was the original theme of this blog, I am confident that it will give me some inspiration.

It only took a few hours for this trip to be interesting.

I flew into Boston early Monday morning and everything seemed to be going smoothly. I firmly believe that the fate of my trip can always be determined by the success of my first flight. If I get bumped to first class, it will be a great week. If I have delays or if my baggage gets lost, I will be lucky to survive until Friday. If the plane crashes, that sucks too.

Although this week I was not bumped to 1^st class, my plane arrived on time an d my luggage made it to Boston with me. I figured that this was a sign from God was everything would run smoothly for the duration from the week.

Wrong.

Now that I think about it, it may have been presumptuous for me to even try to guess what God's signs are supposed to mean. Who am I to claim to know G's intensions. He and I both know I haven't spent any note worthy amount of time at his house lately.

Monday, I had a few visits with high schools and everything seemed to be going well. When I was finished for the day, I decided that I was going to go to the hotel, catch up on some emails and take a nap before finding some dinner.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and I was enjoying my merry drive through the small towns of MA.

CRASH!!!!!!

I felt my car propel forward as the Jeep Wrangler behind me took residence in my back seat.

" Well that's not good" I said outloud to myself.

I get out the car to talk to wrangler's driver and I was surprised to see an attractive man in his mid-20s.

I introduce myself, smiling like a fool. He probably thought that I had suffered some sort of brain injury from the crash, who smiles after a car accident?

We exchanged info, called the police about next steps, and went our separate ways before it hit me that I was driving a rental car. panic set in and tears would not stop rolling out of my eyes.

I returned the car to hertz, got a new uglier car, and went on my merry way. Brian ( the wrangler) sent me an email later that night apologizing again and providing me with a copy of an accident report to fill out.

I responded:

Thanks, I was able to fill one out at Hertz. It was nice meeting you although the circumstances were not ideal. Maybe we will run into each other again sometime. Pun very much intended.

Erin S***

VP of fender benders and rental car relations

BadLuck Inc.

No response. Whatever. I had a good laugh.