"Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one."

Today I turned 12 (margin of error=plus/minus a couple o' decades or so).

Of course the flesh is seriously disputing this. My feeling a piratey 12 that is (Flesh: Nyambura, you seriously don't expect me to do the splits without pulling something do you?!! Me: We can improvise. Where's your imagination?). But flesh & moi are going to have a talk about that later...

I've come to view happiness as fleeting; a series of beautiful moments interwoven with the mundane and the suckage. So I do not chase rainbows much less make plans on what to do with the pot of gold. But I always try to savor those beautiful moments.

Today, was one of those moments. My friends threw me a surprise birthday BBQ that left me touched and stunned. 90% of my friends are football nuts. There was an Arsenal-Man Utd game on this evening, which meant mandatory viewing. And yet here were the fans of both teams, toasting to my growing wrinkly and toothless. So were the haters (read: Liverpool, Chelsea fans) who stood to gloat or groan in their rivals' faces should either team win or lose. How my gal F, (chief party instigator & die hard Arsenal fan) pulled it off is still a mystery to me.

Watching this awesome gathering of family and friends made me reflect on the many years these guys have been in my life. How much 'growing up' we've done together; through periods of utter brokeness, heartbreaks, we're-feeling-rich-let's-splurge moments and passionate Superman vs. Batman debates (btw, Batman is cooler but Gambit rocks!). I thought of those I used to call friends once upon a time but as time passed by, we drifted or out grew each other. Now I'm just a casual acquaintance on face book with a few while the rest simply fell off the grid. And of a time when this gathering would have been a fantasy. This was the time I went through the angst-y phase in high school; in forms three & four to be precise. Not a fun phase, beautiful people. It is A LOT of work and saps your positive vibe faster than a dementor on the war path, plus people tend to avoid you because they fear you will just bring them down...

It bothers me how easy it is to get distracted by the everyday...the pursuit of the good life...the quest to realize our dreams. Sometimes we'll even give in & stick to wallowing when the not-quite and the not-yet make up a huge chunk of our lives. And before you know it, the magic of family and friends; the magic that lights us up from the inside, gets a little dimmer and starts to flicker. We get too busy to pause and revel in the tender, fun, even silly moments peppered lovingly in our lives. After all, such 'mushy' stuff seems trivial doesn't it? It won't pay the bills or buy us that dream house. We take these moments for granted assuming they will always be there...till the day we wake up one morning and find them gone. Life happened...

So I pray for good health, some more growing up with the merry bunch and the prudence to appreciate how they always leave me all grins.

Mob wendos,

Nyambura