Birthday

Today is my twenty-second birthday.

Not as magical as the twenty-first.

I'm going to be a bit melodramatic.

I've had trouble with my birthdays since I had my thirteenth. The big 1-3 is supposed to be the first milestone birthday. Its the foray into womanhood and so every prepubescent girl looks forward to it. I remember writing about what I wanted to happen in my purple diary with kittens on the cover. I imagine my plans were heavily influenced by my adolescent obsession with Sweet Valley Twins. It was to be my first boy-girl party. I knew I would get my first real kiss there. I would look fabulous in something sparkly and my boobs would automatically appear.

Needless to say none of those things happened at my 13th. We watched "A Bugs Life" in my basement and played on the trampoline.

After the 13th comes the 16th. Sweet 16. That's when that first kiss comes. That's when you wear something sparkly as well as the addition of kitten heels. You have fire eaters, dancers, and some C-list rapper. I suppose that was Chingy at the time. Also, parents are supposed to by their daughters fabulous bentleys with customized rims and Louis Vuitton seat covers.

Well no, I didn't wear anything sparkly, no one made out with me, and we had a bon fire in my backyard. I did not receive my Bentley, or my Mercedes, and Chingy did not show up. However some boys were present.

Then came the 18th. My 18th birthday was my last day of high school. It started with me getting a ticket for running a red light at 2AM, half day of classes, and ended with a trip to the beach right after school got out. Not much to complain about (except for the $100 ticket). I watched Zach Trumble fly his kite over the water and I swooned, despite his dad-like appearance. We ran around Grand Haven, got some pronto-pups, and probably laughed about stupid things. Still no Bentley, still no Chingy appearance, and still no sparkles.

I had to work on my 21st. In fact I had to start at a brand new job. I couldn't be hung over, I couldn't ask for it off, so I suffered through it. It was my first day at Nat City, so it was already a bit awkward. Throw a major birthday in there and it just didn't gel. However, we did go "out" that night after I got off work. Out to Friday's at the mall.

Lame Sauce.

So today is my 22nd. I'm a downer. I always want my birthdays to be huge explosions of joy and whatever else goes with that. They typically are not.

I DID get a cake from my co-workers.

Perhaps I will have a more jovial update for tomorrow. Here's hoping, right?

Babies

Today is May 24.

Within a matter of days (perhaps hours, as Mary and Jon are arriving at the hospital right now) there will two new little ladies in my family. I am about to be an Aunt (Well I suppose I have been one since last September). These past few months have been full of baby showers, growing bellies, and awkward questions.

"Are you nervous about the bloody show?"
"You know you're going to poop on the table in front of everyone, right?"

Oh babies. New little lives. Completely blank, about to be rocked by the ridiculous cluster of people that is my family.



EDIT: Maelyn Violette Gamble. Fabulous, precious, 6 lbs 11 oz.

Common Decency and Your Money

As contributors to corporate America, I would like to urge you all to bear ( or bare, in Heidi Montag fashion) the following in mind when you make a trip to the bank.

• Please fill out your deposit/withdrawal slips. Especially if your bank visit involves multiple transactions. You cannot yell at me for making a mistake on your deposit if you cannot adequately verbalize your intentions. By filling out your own slip, you save us both time, and decrease the potential for errors.
• In addition to that, don't get huffy with me when I have to look up your account information because you are too lazy to fill out your own slip.
• I did not personally charge you 4 overdraft fees. So yelling at me is uneccessary and it hurts my feelings. Also, my manager did not personally charge you 4 overdraft fees. However, she does have the authority to refund them. Yelling at me will push me to tell her how much of a jerk you are, and yelling at her will make her less likely to refund said fees.
• Keep a balance, or at least use online banking. When you spend money you don't have, the bank has to loan you the funds to cover it. A $30+ fee is what we charge to finance your fast food/shoe/itunes/alcohol habit. Take responsibility for your lack of responisibility and we'll be pretty nice to you.
• If you are a business and you wait to make all your deposits on one day, at one time, please don't bring all six of them in 15 minutes before we close. That's just bad form.
• I don't know who you are. Unless I do, then you can disregard this one, but really, I don't know your balance, I don't know your last three transactions that cleared, and I don't know when you last ordered checks. Provide me with some identification, and I can check all of those things.
• You may NOT cash other people's checks. I cannot stress this enough. Husbands may not cash their wives checks, mothers may not cash their children's checks, employers may not cash their employees checks. It should be common sense, but for some reason it is not. I have to tell at least five customers each day that I can deposit the check, but cannot cash it. Stop yelling at me about this. Every bank in the country has this policy. It makes you look like an uninformed douche.
• Take your sunglasses off. Otherwise I will trigger my alarm.

Lets all follow these guidelines and we'll all get along just swimmingly.

Gagwagging

We're very clever, my lady friends and me.

In fact, let me tell you how clever we are.

Gamble

Amon

Gordon

Westervelt

Ann Uzarski

Grotenhuis.

Gagwag.

It sounds kind of dirty, giving us a sisterhood of the traveling pants meets Judd Apatow kind of a title. We think we're hilarious. Most people do not.

Of course, we would never reference one another as this in public. Well, not in a sober and serious manner, with complete strangers in earshot, complete strangers who happen to be attractive males and display musical/artistic/athletic talents.

I mean, we don't have t-shirts or anything.

Unfortunately these last few months have been full of musical gagwagging.

One G has been in LA since January, and the day before she comes home, our A1 will be leaving us for the mean streets of Argentina. The littlest G has fallen into a large bong, leaving it only to work at the zoo, and W is playing the lesbionic Marcy in the Peanuts-gang-all-grown-up spectacle "Dog sees God" at the whole art theatre in Kalamazoo. So yes, me and two A's have been holding down Gagwag central that is Grand Rapids Michigan.

Who knows if one will ever see us in the same location again.

Beware the neurosis.

So classes have been out for about three weeks.

I still have several large papers in my possession with critiques I have yet to read. In fact, it usually takes about 2-3 days for me to actually flip an assignment to the back page where my all knowing and all powerful GVSU professors provide me with the valuable feedback designed to make me a better writer. I don't even want that paper back once I turn it in.

Oh, its not disinterest. No way. I'm neurotic. Didn't you know?

I get a slight anxiety attack on the day profs hand back my papers. Their comments are not reflections on my writing, my ideas, or my sentence structure. No, they're comments are on me as a person. If they didn't like my paper, then clearly they don't like me.

So I sit there, avoiding eye contact with my classmates. My talented classmates, who should all be writers and receive handsome salaries and rave reviews from Michiko Kakutani. Keith Rhodes and Charlie Lowe will throw a parade in their honor for their revolutionary views on Hunter S. Thompson, Dave Eggers, or Salmon Rushdie. Their papers will be passed on to the fishladder if not the Mid American Review.

So I slump down in my seat and busy myself with adding an unnecessary event to my planner until the prof calls my name.

"Why did I put that in my paper? What was I thinking with that quote? Does that exerpt even make sense? What did I title this paper? Oh no, that's so corny, why do I think I can be a writer? What am I doing here? This prof hates me. Okay, if I get a B- I'll be okay. Crap, I'm too stupid for this class."

(See? Neurotic.)

When he does place my paper, my piece of me, back into my hands, I jam it down into my backpack between my French book and the handful of napkins that have been in there since last semester. There is no way that my thoughts flow so clearly as those of my peers. I'll look at it later, I tell myself, thinking that I am no better than the non-writing majors in the class.

Keith Rhodes e-mailed our final portfolio grades to us. The only reason the e-mail has been opened is so that it stops showing up as a new message in my gmail. I have yet to read his comments. I don't know what Stan Krohmer thought of my reflections on Ishmael Beah, or why Barb Ziemann hated my paper on effective PR tactics. (Perhaps it is directly related to the fact that I don't know how to properly conclude a paper, or maybe because I used the terms "Strategies" and "Tactics" interchangeably throughout my whole 9 page paper.)

Being a writer is scary.

Being a delusional writer is even scarier.