Happy Birthday to Me

As many of you probably know, this Monday was my birthday. Generally, this would be an awesome thing, right?

WRONG.

Let's start with Sunday, shall we? For a spot of pre-birthday fun, I was lucky enough to go shopping with my mother, my sister, and one of my sister's surprisingly violent friends. The trip began with an hour-and-a-half-long drive. During this time, we discovered four things: our iPod connector cord won't work without extensive static; the iPod of my sister's friend has only 155 songs, each of which sounds identical to the other 154; that same friend really enjoys hitting me; and my mother had left her cell phone at home. Clearly, this was destined to be an excellent day.

We arrived at our first mall of the day, only to discover that the half of the mall where all my favorite stores are located is currently separated (thank you, construction) from the half of the mall where my sister's stores can be found. We started - and long remained - on her end, where I had a lovely time sitting in a lounge chair in Abercrombie & Fitch, slowly dying of asphyxia thanks to the overwhelming power of Eau de Bro perfume and pondering that ancient question: why do the youth of America enjoy shopping in a glorified under-21 nightclub? Eventually, we came to our second (and thankfully, last) mall of the day. Initially, we split up here. I was alone in the mile-long checkout line at H&M when, mid-Rihanna remix, the power went out. Of course, as you'll recall, my mother's cell phone was sitting back in Logansport, and, since my sister's friend had left hers in the van, the rest of my group was armed with only one phone - my highly unreliable sister's. After a few failed attempts, I got through to my mother, who informed me that, unlike in H&M, the power was back on already over in Hollister! Fluorescent light by fluorescent light, the power eventually did come back on, and, after what seemed like an eternity spent directly behind an obese woman who kept "inadvertently" stepping far too far backward into my personal space, I went to rejoin the rest of my group. By the end of the day, the sizable haul of new clothes I had - including two new pairs of shorts which, yes, I can wear this week, thank you very much! 82 degrees HOLLA - ensured that I couldn't call the day a total loss.

But I can and will call it a loss of about 95%. For, at some point during the day, I must have eaten something a little off, because I spent the vast majority of my birthday (including all but about two hours of the night before) violently ill. If you have never been deathly ill and sleep-deprived on your birthday, which also happens to fall, to your great chagrin, on the same day as Mitt Romney's birthday, I would advise that you try it sometime, because IT SUCKS. The only things I ate on my twentieth birthday were ice chips, a watermelon slush from Sycamore (because, I mean, I'm not gonna not), one piece of toast, and a tiny slice of my own birthday cake. For someone who loves food as much as I do, this was pretty much a death sentence. I would like to give a shout-out at this point to those of you who sent me your "happy birthday" well wishes on Facebook/Twitter/via text, because they are literally the only thing that got me through that miserable day. (Well, that and the Florence and the Machine tickets I received as my birthday present, HOLLA AGAIN!) However, I must say that one good thing came of this devilish birthday plague. When I finally forced myself to wear real-people clothes the next day, I found that I was practically swimming in them! Thanks to my accidental spring break diet, I lost what seemed like 50 pounds on Monday - and considering I've still only regained about a third of my usual eating prowess, it looks like this trend will continue for at least a few days. Looks like the "Lazy Girl Diet" I saw advertised on Dr. Oz Monday afternoon is real after all and personified by yours truly.

In all, this is not what I had in mind when I pictured my last birthday in the United States until I'm 22 and officially an old person. (For those of you wondering, my ideal picture consisted of sleeping in until about noon, eating my body weight in Sycamore, El Arriero, and birthday cake, and happily watching mindless television until it was time for people to shower me in gifts.) And of course, this entire blog post is pretty much one giant first-world problem, but that doesn't make it any less true that this birthday was not fun. I did, however, get "Happy Birthday Sarah" signs with Justin Bieber's face on them plastered all over my house - where they remain to this day - so things could be worse. Here's hoping that this time next year, two days after my twenty-first birthday, in London, the only blog post you'll be reading will be entitled "Best. Birthday. Ever."