Happy birthday to me! (you too, Julia)

Today is my birthday! To distract your attention away from exactly which birthday this one is, I will share a trivia tidbit with you: my cousin Julia and I were born on the same day. As I used to remind her, and she now reminds me, I'm 11 hours older. So my one grandmother became a grandmother for the first time twice in one day. Growing up, we called ourselves "twin cousins", and since I have just one brother, she was the closest thing I had to a sister. (I've got to write about some of her escapades sometime. I told her that I don't need to watch soap operas, I've got her!) When my sister-in-law was pregnant with The Cutest Kids in the Whole Wide World, people would ask if twins run in my family. Now, to be polite, I wouldn't mention that the female makes fraternal twins, so it wouldn't matter if they did run in my family. However, I missed months of chances to say, "Why, yes, they do. In fact, I have a twin cousin", and watch them try to figure it out. Sigh. When will I get another chance like that?

Enough toying with peoples' brains. Years ago, I came up with my two rules for life:
Rule #1--Never work on your birthday. It doesn't matter what I do, it just matters that I'm not at work. I haven't worked on my birthday in about 20 years. Some people think I'm a litle odd for that one, but hey, a person's got to have priorities.
Rule #2--When you go out to dinner, always get dessert. See what I mean about priorities? I've eased up on this one now that I eat out more, but failing to even ask if I want dessert is an automatic deduction on the tipping scorecard. I mean, at least give me the option!

After I split up with my husband and started dating, I had to add a few more rules, but we won't talk about them right now...

So, happy birthday to me, and happy birthday to my twin cousin, Julia. Sorry I forgot to send you a card again this year. Out of all the birthdays, you'd think hers would be the one I wouldn't forget!