Aquilegia, specifically the Magpie cultivar of columbine...but you also make me think of tall, strong cedars :]

if I make it to 27 I think I might genuinely live forever. happy fuckin’ birthday to me, and here’s to another year. may it be gentle to me, may it be majorly uneventful, may it be, above all, kind and gentle. I’m gonna go get drunk again.

the year is 2024, and now that I’m once more something approaching properly sober...mom’s baby turned 312 months this year, or 9497 days. the cake was messy at hell and not at all what I’d ordered—but upon due reflection, that was just the perfect summation of this here year.

to next year’s Lia—300 month old baby, scaredy-cat, sweet crybaby—it’s for you and mom I’m trying, mostly. live, honey. live, you get me?

(& you and I already have an idea for how to represent 26 as a number, but perhaps we should workshop it a little, in the interest of further baffling bakers...)

why I’ve used the third person throughout, I’ve no idea. perhaps a compulsion that comes with Telling a Story, even a true one. I’ve had a rum n coke and I intend to have another, even though my lip stings like an absolute motherfucker.

to next year’s Lia: I hope your year was excellent and happy.

owing to a much-too-convoluted-to-explain-and-still-be-funny Incident, the user routinely refers to a quarter of anything as “four-sixteenths.” the joke is frankly too stupid and too charming to pass up, so 4/16 becomes the centerpiece of the cake.

(the bakers were baffled, but did wonderfully.)

the user decides to rehash last year’s idea and represent her new age as a simple sum: felicitously, 25 happens to be the added total of the single-digit odd natural numbers, 1 3 5 7 9.

but 25 is also exactly a quarter of a century, which cannot possibly be allowed to pass without notice...

the user turns 25, which is to say she is now her mother’s 300 month old baby. (the user is trying to say she loves her mom. she is failing, badly.)

for this year’s candles, the user tried to Frankenstein together a 5 squared—alas, no small candles were available.

the year is 2023: the user still needs that fucking million in pounds sterling. instead the user gets a dental abscess in full swell on the 23rd of December, fitting summation of her year.

the year is 2022. the user badly needs a foot-rub, a variety of pharmaceuticals which cannot be acquired even with prescription, or, at the very least, a million pounds sterling.

the user turns 24 and represents this on her cake with six number 4 candles, one of which seems to get drunk before her.

the year is 2021. the user decides to get a little weird with it. the user attempts to find a birthday candle shaped like the plus sign, and is unable to. the user is Very Sad. the user turns 1 5 8, 158, or perhaps 15+8 as intended, which is to say, 23.

the year is 2020. (will it ever stop feeling like the year is 2020.) two make a pair and three make company—but three can also make a tradition. in homage to the initial mistake which started this whole thing, in honour of trinities, the user buys two 0-shaped candles and three 2-shaped ones.

the year is 2019. the user enjoyed last year’s birthday cake so much she decides to repeat the ‘glitch’—this time thoughtfully and on purpose. she purchase candles to represent the expected number, 21...and two zeroes.

the year is 2018. the user is nocturnal. the user’s mother just got off a night shift. neither notice they’ve grabbed an extra birthday candle until both get home, at which point the user giggles, and says oh, hell, might as well, I can’t wait until 30 to use this, now can I.

anyway in light of this I’m gonna go watch Doom Patrol or fucking. something