I’m not in the mood to give one of my long birthday posts here, just like I wasn’t in the mood to do my usual pre-birthday begging for stuff off of my Amazon wishlist. Suffice it to say that my birthday booty this year was a bit bigger than usual, and I’ll get the specifics later (some items are still on their way here according to my sister), but obviously the events of the past month kind of put a damper on my usual biannual willing submission to materialistic desire. I think this may have been the hardest day for me to get through since the day Dad died. I was kind of tasked with doing the usual food run for my birthday (Mancino’s pizza and Dairy Queen), and of all the things Dad used to do that I’ve been taking over, that was the hardest one for me to do yet. Even coming back down to Ohio from work, knowing I’d be making the pizza and ice cream run, I began to get sick to my stomach. I’m not even sure that I would have had a birthday party tonight if I hadn’t known that Mom and Heather and Mark kind of needed the party more than I did.

There was an incredible dual quality to today. At once, I don’t think I’ve felt Dad’s absence more than I did today — especially when we sat down for pizza and presents — but at the same time, his spiritual presence with me, and with the rest of us, seemed stronger than ever today. I have to keep reminding myself of the spiritual aspect of this as the days go by here, as I have to fight my urge to save everything of his (although he wasn’t quite as bad of a packrat as I am, he had a thirty-year headstart on me), but some days it’s harder to deal with than others, and this day was a total pain to deal with it.

I wish I could say that things will get better, but Dad’s birthday would have been this Friday (yeah, there’s your peak ahead to the intro for this week’s Friday Five). Normally there’s a lot to celebrate this week (St. Patrick’s Day, the anniversary of us buying this property), but this year everything’s basically been turned on its head. I keep reminding myself that things will never return to "normal" because what was "normal" before will never be again, but I’m hoping that after we get through this week that things will start to become a little easier to deal with. Right now, though, I just feel like curling up in a ball on my bed and shutting the rest of the world out.