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My birthday last week was filled with ding dongs and dildos and a deep sigh of gratitude that a few people treated me to a trip to the salon tomorrow to go back to being a blonde.

I sort of stretched out my own personal celebration, doing shows on my birthday proper, then attempting to watch an engrossing movie, selecting Changeling which was sort of a big fat mistake. YES, it was engrossing. In a horrible, harrowing, gut-wrenching way. And even though I knew I was being totally emotionally manipulated by the film industry, I couldn’t just TURN IT OFF the way I did with Titanic (you heard me — I shut that melodramatic motherfucker off and refused to watch it past halfway).

Changeling pretty much ruined our plan to go see The Reader the last night it was playing in town. Instead we opted for something a little more uplifting to balance out the trauma of Changeling: we moved the Playstation (a birthday present from years back) into the bedroom and played a snowboarding video game (SSX3) for hours. And ate ding dongs. Well, *I* ate ding dongs. Delia didn’t.

And then I threw the rest of the ding dongs away. Because a) my birthday was OVER, and b) I have a goal to lose 15 pounds by June 1st (or less if I’m satisfied/feel good before I get there; since I’ve already lost four since I made the goal, I only have 11 to go). I definitely don’t want to lose TOO much of this action:

I continued celebrating a couple days ago when I noticed our friend had a two-for-one print sale going on and since I hadn’t bought any of her art yet, I treated myself! It was affordable and made me happy.

But what I *really* wanted to do for my birthday was spend some more time reading Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy which is SO FUCKING AWESOME I set it aside because I seriously couldn’t stand for it to end knowing there would be a big gaping emptiness without having more of it to look forward to. So today? I went to the used bookstore and picked up the only two Auster paperbacks they had on the shelf (Oracle Night and The Brooklyn Follies). Now I can finish The NY Trilogy and still feel like there’s a reason to live.

I also looked for the second and third books in the Abhorsen series, but they only had Sabriel (which I finished months ago and want to hurry up and continue before I forget everything). I grabbed a couple other titles (ex. Codex) plus some appealing books in the “free box” (ex. The Tommyknockers) and guiltily made my way home with a satisfying stack of stories to chew on. Sometimes I leave the books I buy in the car or somewhere Delia won’t see them right away because I feel so bad about spending the money on them when I don’t even read most of them right away (if ever) and I refuse to GET RID of any of them unless they really suck total ass, so they’ll all be living with us forever.

The thing is, I need to have CHOICES. Because there are some moments on the toilet where I’m after a very specific kind of book to lull myself into a comfortable shit. Or the weather demands a certain genre. Or I’m emotionally craving a story that delivers total escapism. And fuck . . . when it only costs $25 to buy a big armful of pleasure, how wrong can it be? Plehhhhhhhszhoooooooor . . . is in the booooooooooks.

Maybe tomorrow after I endure the torture of getting my hair colored, I’ll continue celebrating my birthday with some Paul Auster and a sweet mug of Russian Caravan tea.