The February Shoe

Do other people do this?

When I’m picking out a new calendar, the picture on the page for my birthday month is a big factor.  I like when the whole year’s worth of images is printed on the back cover so I can see what I’m getting in to.

It’s silly, I guess, because February is the shortest month of the year.  If my favorite picture is on the February page, I only get to look at it for twenty-eight days.

Two years in a row, I’ve had the same calendar in my office: The Metropolitan Museum: Shoes.  And two years in a row, a pretty purple 1930s-era pump has been the shoe of February.

Oh, right, so my birthday is tomorrow.

I put clean sheets on my bed and fluffed all my pillows.  I’ve got my favorite t-shirt and my Dunkin’ Donuts card laid out for the morning.  There are Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (!) in my lunch bag.  My desk at work is all cleared off (there were a couple of things I just did not want to deal with on my birthday, and I put them in the bottom drawer for Wednesday morning).  Caitlin and I are getting our nails done after work.  Marie and I are going out later this week.

I want to spend my birthday on these little things, these inconsequential things that make me feel special.

When I turned twenty, I hadn’t shaved my legs for a week because I was having them waxed before my trip to Chile.  I spent this perfect, quiet morning at home in my bathrobe, I had lunch with my grandmom, I went to work and did math homework and ate cake with my sweet boys.  If I could have changed about that day, I would have shaved my legs.  That’s it!

I don’t need a perfect day.  I just want the nicest possible totally normal day.

And a new mattress.  I want a new mattress.  Which my parents are getting for me because I’m turning twenty-five, and old ladies need back support as much as they need beauty rest.