[I'm participating in Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, in case you're all like, what's with the theme?]

July 8. My 34th birthday. I’ve just had my hair done.  I’m dressed like me, which is different from how I was dressed last year on my birthday, when I was in corporate drag. My mother and I meet at my favorite restaurant*.  It is a girls’ lunch par excellance; we have serious talk and fun talk and hushed-tones talk and laughing-so-hard-we-don’t-care-if-we’re-kicked-out talk. But we don’t get kicked out. We have delicious food and wine. Our waiter loves us and brings us the dessert tray and I choose the creme au chocolat. I bring the spoon to my mouth and, quite literally, blush. It’s that good.

Oh, I say. And then I have some more.

*That’s Zazou, in Redondo Beach, in case you need a treat. Ignore the horrid music that cues up as the page loads!