Hot Doggin' in Space with Flame

Today is my birthday. As a friend of mine wrote to me, it’s the last birthday of the first half of my life. Another way of looking at it: the last milestone of youth, marking that one might only hang on to pre-middle age for one more year. It’s also a Tuesday. A school day. A corporate day. A non-party day and a non-party night. It might be a pretty sober situation, but it isn’t for two reasons. First, anyone who casts even a cursory glance at my life would know that the celebrate:mourn ratio is tipped wildly in my favor. And that’s regardless of the day. Counting my blessings doesn’t begin to cover it. If I spent every day celebrating, I might be giving my blessings their appropriate nod. So, if today is a bit quiet in terms of naked tequila shots and such, well, that’s no indication. I’m so lucky, every day is a little bit of ecstasy. And the days that don’t feel like that, well, that’s fine, but it’s really only lack of appropriate perspective that could ever allow me to feel sorry for myself. And I know it. Lest you conclude that all of these pretty words are simply justification for not having a party, I should perhaps give a glimpse of last Friday and reason number two. As I jump onto the slippery slide that will convey me, tumbling, away from the palace of youth, my Flame-Haired Angel made sure we visited that palace, physically, one more time. Turned out to be more of a castle, actually. I played hooky from work and Flame-Haired Angel took me to Disneyland. Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, Mad Hatter's Tea Cups , Peter Pan, Haunted House, giant anthropomorphized animals in funny outfits, and princesses mobbed by four-year-old autograph hounds. And hot dogs. Foot-long hot dogs. It was fantastic. It was celebratory. It was exhaustingly wonderful. I hadn’t been to Disneyland since living in California when I was very young, and Flame-Haired Angel had never had a Disney experience outside a cinema. So, EuroDisney returned me to happy memories from childhood, and gave “the happiest place on earth” to an Australian girl who’d never even dreamed of going. We had the perfect Disney day. Few long lines, and one of the only exceptions was our penultimate ride of the day. We stubbornly held out for over an hour to fulfill Flame-Haired Angel’s desire to climb aboard Dumbo and soar in the sky on a magical elephant. The name is appropriate. It’s the dumbest ride in the park. But, for her, it was worth the wait. And for me, well, I got to celebrate my birthday by flying with an Angel.