Cupcakes, Chinese Pizza, and Cougar Lesbians

This, friends, is the story of my 26th birthday.

Maturity comes later, yes?

I went to work on Thursday, with my favorite black and pink skirt that I got at a thrift store with Maria a few months back, because what is your birthday if not an excuse to wear your favorite clothing pieces?, and was greeted with a bunch of streamers and a few little gifties on my desk, and even though we always pass around a card for everyone to sign for their birthdays, I am getting increasingly sappy with my old age, and I damn near got emotional from it. My coworkers are sweet and I love them.

And there were cupcakes. Oh, lord, there were cupcakes.

Three different people brought cupcakes. The cupcakes overfloweth.

I am not sure how many I ate. I lost count around five.

I hereby deem 26 the Year of the Cupcake.

Anyway it was a fun day at work, I know a lot of people take their birthdays off, but I like hanging out with my coworker peeps, so I never do. (I always take the day after off). (And not because I plan to be hungover, which I'm sure is the assumption. I didn't even have plans for that night, so there.) I was bombarded all day with facebook messages and while I know that annoys a lot of people because all these people mysteriously come out of the woodwork to wish them a happy birthday, I am a giant attention whore and I adore the onslaught of e-love.

Anywho. My birthday itself was pretty tame. After work I braved the drizzle (this is a big feat when you've taken the time to straighten your hair!), went to Best Buy to purchase the Pink Camera, and hung out with Calee and her boy, later joined by Molly, and there were noms. Then I talked to my dad, mom, and grandparents on the phone, using a shocking amount of minutes on my plan since I NEVER TALK ON THE PHONE, and went home and played with the camera after the battery was all charged up. Then I went to bed.

I know, you're on the edge of your seat now.

Then on Friday (yes, you are getting a full play by play), I went and got my hair chopped off, and then I went to go wedding dress shopping with my friend Steph, which will warrant its own post but sadly no pictures, because I can't be giving that shit away, and then... The Festivities.

I changed my clothes at least once because I am super struggling with my weight right now, which, again, probably its own post at another time, and I hate hate hate the way I look right now and I was feeling especially self conscious because, you know, I chopped off all my hair and could no longer hide behind it, and then my gay bf arrived all the way from across the state because he LEFT ME for a JOB (that bitch) and there was a giddy middle-of the-street bouncy reunion hug, and then we collected our car-load of peeps and set off for the bright city lights of Des Moines.

Or, something.

So anyway. We arrive at my favoritest place ever, which is a little spot called Fong's Pizza, who has the greatest pizza in the entire world, of things you would never even imagine, of which we primarily feast upon their Crab Rangoon Pizza which, seriously, will give you mouth orgasms. Mouthgasms. It's delicious.

Naturally, it's always busy, so I expected a wait.

They estimated 20 minutes to 2 hours.

That's quite the fucking window.

So we're like, great, put us down, here's our cell number, we're going to go across the street and get martinis. (Because this place happens to be in my favorite little corner of Des Moines, conveniently right across the street from my favorite bar. EFFICIENT.)

Our wait ended up being approximately a half an hour. Which means that nearly everyone still had full drinks and had to chug their martinis.

Including Calee, who had a dirty martini that was primarily composed of gin.

You can imagine how she felt after that.

Hee.

Anyway we went and had our glorious pizza and hung out there for a while and did their Kamikaze shot in which the shot-taker gets to wear a crash helmet, and I'm just going to say it, that was probably the highlight of the entire night if not week if not month. It was so much ridiculous fun. Loved it.

(Side: why do kamikaze pilots even need helmets? Think on that and let me know.)

Finally we decided to clear out because someone else was probably waiting for our table because someone is always waiting for a table here, and so we poured out into the street, filled with indecision and the need to drink grown-up beverages.

We ended up deciding to go to the gay bar because about half of our contingent had never been, and why the hell not?

So off we went! It was a little sad, there were only 3 drag queens performing that night, two of which I'd never seen before, and my favorite was not there, but we got all the newbies to tip them, so that's always fun to watch.

Now, for as many times as I've been to this particular bar, I've never gotten hit on by any of the lesbians. I've gotten eyeballed once, but never approached. Tonight, however, the lesbians were on the prowl.

We were first approached by a really drunk, young lesbian who had taken a liking to Calee. Who kind of looked at her, and looked at me, and was like "that's your girlfriend, right?" and Calee was like, "uh... sometimes" and honestly it wouldn't have been hard to play that out because people probably do think we're Together. She kind of wistfully peaced out and was back on the hunt, and we told Calee that that's what she got for wearing flannel to a gay bar.

Later, this older lady, henceforth to be known as the Cougar Lesbian, came up to our table, looked Calee up and down, and was like, "what are you, twelve?" and then proceeded to tell her that she was going to look like her when she got to be her age. Which was 56. As she announced.

She then turned to me and shook my hand, leaned in and said, "You're straight, aren't you?" to which I replied, "yeah..." and I actually felt kind of bad, not that she was, you know, my type, if I had a type of woman, but I'm bad at rejection, and she was like, "you're hot" and I'm like, "thanks" and she was like, "I picked you out special out of this whole room" and I'm like Omg, awkward. And she kept shaking my hand. I... don't really know.

I mean, despite having an easy out (being straight and all), it's always, always awkward to get hit on in a bar by someone you're not interested in.

Sigh.

After that, we kind of had a hard time deciding what else to do, so we just kind of went home. I went to lunch with Tyler the next day at our "famous" BBQ place (I never get BBQ there? Their burgers are heavenly though) (supposedly Harrison Ford has been there, like, made a special trip to get there, because why the hell else would he be here?), whatever, it's a landmark in central Iowa and the wait is almost as bad as Fong's even though it's like five times as big, because it's always stupidly busy, and got sung to by the waitstaff but, whatever, I wanted my free ice cream and it was totally within the 3 day window of my birthday so I earned it.

If you like ice cream, you will die when you see their menu. It is the ice cream menu of your DREAMS.

I think someone around here owes me a check for promoting local businesses, eh?

Anyway.

It was a glorious birthday and I would be a terrible, terrible person if I didn't leave you with some pictures. I was going to try to limit myself but there are SO MANY good ones, and, well. We'll see how I do.

We didn't even make it out of the parking lot before the pictures started.

That's, erm, our skyline. More or less.

This actually took a great deal of balance to pull off.

This is one of my favorites. Like, ever. Not just of this night.

This is my new favorite picture of all time.

Yeah. Admit it. You wish you could have been there. It fucking rocked. I love my peeps. Love love love.