Happy Birthday To Me

So I don't have anything special planned for my birthday today but THE UNIVERSE had other ideas, because I got several completely random super-nice "you rock!" emails from strangers this morning. So thank you, Universe, and thank you, random people who woke up this morning and decided to send me a nice email!

If you wanted to do something nice in celebration of me having been alive a whole 'nother year, I would love it if you decided to pay someone (someone ELSE, not me, I'm over quota on compliments-receiving already and it's only lunchtime) a compliment today.

Go ahead and tell your barista you like their piercings, or stop someone in the grocery store and comment favorably on their shoes. Tell a parent "Your child is so cute, and so well-behaved!" Tell a dog-owner "Your dog is so cute, and so well-behaved!" Tell someone you work with how you've noticed Cool Thing X they've done lately. Go on, be creative! Be profligate, even, with your compliments, because Compliment Someone Because Erin Said So Day comes but once a year.

(Once you've complimented someone, you also have my permission to treat yourself to a cupcake, or other frosted baked good. Have fun!)

Thirty-Seven!

"One absinthe drinker had a mania which made it impossible for him to see a blue silk dress without attempting to set it on fire. He was arrested on a national fête day for having put his lighted cigar to no fewer than thirty-seven dresses."

As some of you have winkled, it is indeed my birthday today, and I claim thirty-seven years on this fête day (although I do NOT countenance the torching of blue silk dresses today or any day, under the influence of absinthe or not). Hurrah!

Searching on "thirty-seven" got me (in addition to the marvelous excerpt above) some other real gems:

"There is nothing extraordinary in the existence of a beautiful, vivacious, attractive woman of thirty-seven, nothing strange in the fact that lovers should collect about her ... still the situation is unusual, to say the least ... thirty-seven is a very good age, a very good age indeed -- if Lady Matilda would only think so, and would only show that she thinks so. Why there are plenty of ladies who are quite passé by thirty or thirty-five -- they are full-grown women, they think sensibly and talk sensibly about their children and servants and domestic affairs -- those are the things that ought to interest women of Lady Matilda's time of life." (found here)

She was a woman of thirty-seven, rather tall and plump, without being fat; she was not pretty, but her face was pleasing, chiefly, perhaps, on account of her kind brown eyes. Her skin was rather sallow. Her dark hair was elaborately dressed. She was the only woman of the three whose face was free of make-up, and by contrast with the others she seemed simple and unaffected. (from here)

September, 1856, when she was thirty-seven years old, marked the beginning of her effort to become a writer of fiction. She had always desired to write a novel, but she believed herself "deficient in dramatic power both of construction and dialogue," although feeling that she would be at ease "in the descriptive parts of a novel." (about George Eliot)

A Lady about thirty-seven years of age, having an oval face, represented in nearly a front view. She has on a white cap, and wears a very large full ruff, edged with lace, and a black silk dress, and is adorned with a cluster of gold chains, suspended round the neck, and reaching down to the bodice. Dated 1633. (from here)

Oh, and in other birthday news, Rita celebrates her birthday this month, and is offering 15% off at her site, Cemetarian ... use the code "Birthday".

Hope you all have marvelous days today, whether it's your birthday or not. (But extra-marvelous if it's your birthday.)