today

It's my birthday. This year it feels like the year I turned 19. I climbed out of my roommate Mollie's window and drank wine from the bottle on the roof of our rented rundown colonial. It felt like the day was marked by being the opposite of an important day. It was the turning away of importance.

I loved being 18, on the cusp of some thing giant, alive, electric. Being 19 was away from all of that. When I was 18 I traveled across the country on a newspaper ad whim, and returned alone on the Greyhound bus. Everyone exclaimed "18! Just 18!" or "18! So precocious!" Suddenly I was not a one of those things.

Last night I couldn't get to sleep. I read. I pet the cats. I saw the clock shine 12:05. My birthday.

I didn't want to do anything today-- not vehemently nothing, just that nothing sounded good, nothing sparked me. I don't want to leave the house, or make a production. But Erik inspired me, and we're going to the new crepe place. And just as things often work out in the end, most people can't make it, and it will be low key and casual.

On a side note, I love the shortened nicknames for "casual" and "usual." But how do you write out "cas" and "us" in the best way to be understood? "Casz?" "Ush?" Ugh.