{"id":3349,"date":"2023-07-05T16:27:57","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T22:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irenenorth.com\/writings\/?p=3349"},"modified":"2024-04-22T02:46:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T02:46:03","slug":"happy-birthday-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/2023\/07\/05\/happy-birthday-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/cake-IMG_20230705_145104042.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3350\" src=\"https:\/\/www.irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/cake-IMG_20230705_145104042.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"519\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t decide what I wanted for my birthday today, so I got it all.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>After therapy today, I had a big decision to make &#8211; how was I going to spend the rest of my birthday. Paul had to work, so there&#8217;s no meal with him. I could work, but I set up a boundary when I started writing again that I wasn&#8217;t going to do it on Wednesdays. I was also a little hungry and I wanted cake. So, I put on my street clothes and headed to the grocery store.<\/p>\n<p>Let me explain my thought process here because there is a reason behind each of these purchases.<\/p>\n<p>Starting on the left, is a cake. It&#8217;s actually four cakes. I had a hard time deciding which kind of cake I wanted and I can&#8217;t afford one of each. I knew I wanted yellow cake, but the store only sells slices of yellow cake. So, the four kinds was an easy decision. They are carrot, chocolate, German chocolate, and Red Velvet. I only like three of the flavors, so Paul is going to have to eat the Red Velvet cake.<\/p>\n<p>Next up is my favorite water, Waiakea. Then, I get to drink tea out of my favorite mug, which was a gift to me several years ago.<\/p>\n<p>The yellow cake is to the right of the tea cup. A few years ago someone asked me what my favorite cake was. When I said yellow, they were confused as they thought of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yellowcake\">yellowcake<\/a>, a type of uranium concentrate powder. Honestly, she&#8217;s usually a smart lady. Yellow cake is still my favorite. Everyone also puts too much frosting on cakes, so I&#8217;ll be scraping most of that shit off.<\/p>\n<p>On top of the yellow cake is an old comfort food I rarely eat anymore, but it&#8217;s my birthday and there it was screaming <strong>2x the peanut butter<\/strong> at me. How could I not get it? When I was a little girl, my family was poor and we never purchased store bought cookies. Our cookies were always homemade and only for special times of the year. On the rare occasion I could pick the cookies we got, it was always Nutter Butter.<\/p>\n<p>The store had two options for ice cream cake and I couldn&#8217;t decide so I got both. When I was little, my grandmother used to take me to Friendly&#8217;s for ice cream. It was expensive and sometimes it would just be the two of us. She usually got chocolate chip mint while I stuck with vanilla. When Friendly&#8217;s came out with their peanut butter sauce and then Reese&#8217;s peanut butter cup sundae I went with those as well. Friendly&#8217;s always reminds me of my grandma and home and her making me feel special.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, if I eat at Taco John&#8217;s I&#8217;m getting one of two things &#8211; a chicken soft taco with no sauce or what&#8217;s front and center in the photograph. It&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/tacojohns.com\/menu\/taco-bravo\/\">Taco Bravo<\/a> with no sauce. I always forget to say no tomatoes, so Paul gets to eat those. For those not in the know, a Taco Bravo is a soft shell with refried beans smeared on it. Then, a hard shell is slapped in there with meat (no sauce), cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s how I celebrated my birthday today. I ate the Taco Bravo and half my yellow cake. The rest is going to take a while. My eyes have always been too big for my stomach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I couldn&#8217;t decide what I wanted for my birthday today, so I got it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[54,67,94],"class_list":["post-3349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-birthday","tag-cake","tag-comfort-food"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3525,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3349\/revisions\/3525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}