It's the Most Unpleasant Time of Year

Whenever my family moved my parents orchestrated it so that my siblings and I could finish out the school year. That usually meant we left mid-June. I appreciated never having to be the new kid during the school year but that meant we moved within days of my birthday. I had a few birthday parties that doubled as goodbye parties that were still fun but always made my birthdays bittersweet. To add to the bitter, my perpetually strained relationship with my mother seemed to come to a head on my birthday. Some birthdays were worse than others but after the divorce they were consistently bad. Birthdays are sort of touch and go now and I take them as they come. I don't look forward to them at all. I've just been conditioned to take them with a grain of salt. And very little excitement.

The reason I'm even bringing attention to my birthday (I don't usually tell people) is because I found out about this really cool application on Facebook. It's called Birthday Wish and it enables me to set up a donation account so people can give money to a charity instead of getting me gifts. My goal is a simple $100. This is something I've been wanting to do for years. I don't really want stuff anymore, or if I do it's far too expensive to ask other people to buy it for me, and I've been trying to find ways for people to give for me but not to me. I think this is the perfect thing. The charity is I Love Banned Books which is a group that works to keep banned and challenged books on the shelves of libraries. I've written many times about how much a certain banned book has meant to me. I want to help make sure others can have access to it and other great works of literature that just happen to make the wrong people mad. So, please check out the page and if you want to give, give whatever you want. And pass it along. I want something good to come out of this year.