Happy Birthday! I'm Not Allowed to Publicly Announce It But It Ryhmes With Bifty Bive!

Some of you may not know this, but I work with my mother. Not only do I work with my mother, but we also share an office. And, not only do we share an office, but we also live together.

Yeah, soak it in. Take a minute.

I work five feet from my mother and then I go home to her.

This makes for a very odd time in both our lives. My sister has probably thought about disconnecting her phone so that she won't have to hear another, "Your mother just said 'bad' in a Michael-Jackson-really-means-good way" phone call again. I think it was surprising when we found working together was not an awful nightmare - considering the fact that I am (cringe)my mother's daughter, and am equally as prone to want to be in charge, right at all times, and the prettiest one in the office. But I may have lost that last one. My mom is really pretty. She's also incredibly patient and intelligent, and is good about being a mom at work without being a mom at work.

She's had a pretty tough life, but you'd never know it. Not ever. Not from her demeanor, not from the things she says, not from the constant smile on her face. She has never complained about a single thing, but has taken joy in all things life and love. I didn't really let her life sink in until recently, when I fully understood that she's had some pretty shitty things happen - death, divorce, disease (the d trifecta), working for her mother. . . all these horrible things yet she's never let it bring her down. I, on the other hand, fall into a deep depression when Desperate Housewives is a re-run, so it's nice to have someone so grounded around me.

She's a wonderful mother, sister, daughter, boss, and sweetie (Yeah, my mom has a Latin boyfriend who calls her sweetie/baby/gorgeous, or some variation therein, and it is very ew-y, and eye-rolling-y because they're so in love and it's my mom so - gross. But she's really happy so it's hard to be too grossed out when they've forgotten each other's names and introduce one another as, "This is my sweetie. Sweetie, this is Jill Sobule." All you can really do is be glad they act like school kids and not like Fred and Ethel.) And it's pretty hard to be good at all those things, but she pulls it off. Without the help of prescription drugs.

Happy Birthday Momma. You are pretty awesome.