The Many Failings of a July Birthday.

Today marks my 22nd birthday. Of the 22 birthdays I've had, five stand out in my mind as particularly... disasterous, and it is those five which I'd like to expound upon now.

Tenth Birthday, 1996: Once, in my youth, a friends mother made a birthday cake that is responsible for 2/5 of my problem birthdays. It was a pool-- chocolate mini donuts as inning tubes, frosting people, etc, etc. On my tenth birthday my mother and I decided to recreate it. This, of course, meant we brought it to the Giant Foodstore bakery staff to recreate. Instead of receiving the cake of my dreams, blue jello and icing people and chocolate diving boards and all, we were-- two hours before my party was set to begin-- given a cake with a buxom, bikini clad beauty bathing in a pool upon a pink swim float in a fairly seductive position. My mother was flabbergasted, saying "THIS IS FOR A TEN YEAR OLD" in an exasperated manner to the bakery staff. Because my party was so soon, the bathing beauty was scraped off and "happy birthday sara" was scrawled across the cake in icing.

Eleventh Birthday, 1997. Due to the failures of my swimming pool cake the previous year, my mother and I decided that we would be better suited to hire a cake maker who could respond to our individual needs. Mother looked in the phone book and found a cake maker who lived a few streets down. We gave her a call, got in the car and headed over to her home.
The woman seemed very nice, a portly, wily haired woman in her 40s. We explained to her what we wanted and she said us on her couch while she made my mother coffee and gave us her portfolio to leaf through.
Red Flag #1. When you open up a portfolio and immediately see breasts. Cake breasts, to be specific. Turn the page.
Red Flag #2. Penis. Cake.... penis.
Oh thank God, we turned the page and there was a non controversial cake raccoon. Lets look at that for a while. Turn the page.
An entire nude woman, her naughty parts exposed, crafted out of cake. Turn the page. A CAKE NUDE MAN, pointing to the ceiling with his cake staff.
At this point, mother calmly closes the portfolio and places it on the table. She tells me that we will not be getting a cake from this lady. We get up and slip into the day, before the wily haired woman ever comes out of the kitchen with her coffee.

Fourteenth Birthday, 200o. Hiking the 100 Mile Wilderness of the AT. We were close to the end of our day and stopped to have lunch by a lake. Lunch was pizza!!! AKA macaroni and cheese cheese on top of a pita. Disgusting. Only one obstacle remained before we got to our campsite-- Potawadjo Ridge, a small little hill. After having just hiked high, craggy mountains for days, Potawadjo Ridge received nothing but our ridicule. "Oh noooo I don't think I can hike over it, its hugeeee!" Well. Potawadjo Ridge has a sense of humor.
Just as we arrived at the summit of Potawadjo Ridge, disaster struck in the from of a freak lightning storm. And not a lightning storm a couple miles away-- a lightning storm within 500 feet of us. As in, we were made aware of it when we saw a tree up ahead get struck, spark a bit and fall over. We immediately assumed "lightning position". Lightning position is designed for close proximity to electric storms so that, in the event you are struck by lightning, the energy will go through your feet and ass, not through your heart and kill you. HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
We stayed like that for two hours. It hailed golf balls. It poured rain. The temperature dropped 15 degrees. I was in a friggen cotton t shirt. It kept lightning over and over-- there was no pause between the flash of the lightning and the rumble of thunder. I genuinely thought I was going to die.
After two hours, the storm subsided and I got up. I was shivering so badly that I couldn't walk, all of us had pretty bad hypothermia from sitting in hail and rain for that long. Trip leader got some emergency chocolate bars out of his backpack to get our blood sugar up. I vividly remember him handing me mine but my hands were shivering so bad it shattered and fell all over the ground. We had six tenths of a mile until our lean to and we RAN the entire way, I have no recollection of it at all. Just little snippets of memory running through trees, half tripping on roots. We arrived, made hot chocolate and sang happy birthday.

Fifteenth Birthday, 2001. Seven week whitewater canoeing trip in Northern Quebec down the Mistassibi river. Unfortunately, there is not a direct road or even any direct way to GET to the Mistassibi so three of our seven weeks consisted of getting to the river itself-- pond hopping, canoeing rivers upstream, walking our canoes down untraversable rapids while in the frigid water up to our shoulders down rapids and, my personal favorite, PORTAGING. Portaging is when you physically carry your canoes, your backpacks, tents, food, everything over land to the next waterway.
My birthday, July 14, 2001, we were scheduled for eight portages. Eight. Getting out of our canoes, unloading, carrying everything any distance from a tenth of a mile to two miles, reloading and canoeing to the next one. My favorite was the two miler, it was such a joy. There's nothing quite like getting lost in the Canadian woods while carrying a 95 pound piece of wood on your shoulders. We completed all 8 and got to our campsite.
Two things I remember besides doing eight god awful portages: first, that the boys were mad the girls took the good tent site so they cut down a bush and put it under our tent. So I slept on a bush. Assholes. Second, that we made a Jell-O No bake cheesecake for the occasion and it SET. The cheesecake set. For the record, they usually only set while IN THE REFRIGERATOR. It was that cold.

Eighteenth Birthday, 2004. This summer I am working at Darrow Wilderness Camp's base camp so I figure I'm safe. There are no showers on the island, so we have to bathe in the lake. I decide that I'm going to treat myself and wash my hair, take a nice long lake bath. I go into the supplies room and grab a plastic container of what looked like Dr. Brauners all purpose shampoo/soap/car degreaser/all purpose liquid. I go to the lake and take my time, wash my hair, just have a wonderful time making sure I'm nice and clean.
Fast forward ten hours: why is my hair so gross? I guess it was because that plastic container had VEGETABLE OIL in it, not shampoo. I washed my hair with vegetable oil.

Happy. Fucking. Birthday. Lets hope this one is better!