Today is My Half Birthday

[rinue]

Today is my half birthday, which Ciro and I have agreed to call a "happay" rather than a "biday." He offered me icing but no cake, which I firmly declined, and then we got into an argument over whether or not sugar is an inalienable ingredient of whipped cream. (I maintain that it is not, although I don't object to its addition.) Uncle Rex is angry with me for not calling more often, or in fact ever (it's his actual birthday), but I feel he has no reasonable high ground since it's by his own choice that he rejects e-mails, handwritten letters, and as far as I know, telegrams. I did send him a birthday card which I wrote with my foot. (This took some practice. Psychotic-looking rehearsal attempts fill a couple of pages of my notebook.)

I'm still slogging through the last of the pile of stuff I have to write before I can get to the stuff I want to write, and I'm annoyed that it's taking so long. I hate filling in stuff after I've done an outline. Putting it all in to sentences takes so much longer than thinking about it; I have these beautiful condensed thoughts, which somehow take up dozens of pages. I miss the computer science classes where I could get a B just for turning in the algorithm and forego the actual coding.