Hazards of spring mid-morning porch-sitting: Tree sex gets in your coffee.

Nick bought me a new beautiful cruiser bike for my birthday because apparently being a developmental lemon who moved away to go to graduate school to get a degree I'm still lukewarm about makes me worthy of stuff and praise. Ah, Nick. You're true blue. One thousand kisses upon your beardy mug.

Initial attempts to name the bike Suri Cruiser have been vetoed.

It's become basically impossible to drive back to Athens.

Belated suggestion: if you are in graduate school and thus, have zero dollars, make your mom a mix CD. She can play it in the car on the way to yoga or dropping her donations off at the food pantry, or you could finally teach her how to use the iPod she got for Christmas and put it on her iTunes. Maybe remember how to do the four things you know how to do in Photoshop and design an "album cover". Maybe slip the CD in a 45 sleeve and tape the "cover art" on the front. Really anything to save her from the Josh Groban and Michael Buble CDs she's gotten her hands on.

My mom is awesome. Her muscle memory from 13 years of Catholic school is still intact: she tells me that sometimes when she sees a parked police cruiser with a speed gun, instead of slowing down, she instinctually swallows her gum. Sometimes when my dad teaches late, she has a huge bowl of ice cream for dinner. She and my dad own the dance floor. She has a raging herb garden. She never wanted me to shave my legs or wear makeup or dye my hair. (I did them anyway) At the time, I thought she was trying to squash my individuality, but now I can see that she wanted me to think for myself.

The weather on May 9th is always perfect for fire, beer, and friends. Excellent planning on my parents' part.

Thanks, everyone. I couldn't ask for better dudes.

The men of my family wait for our table at the bar.

My favorite restaurant in Dayton is a Thai/pan-Asian place downtown, housed in a factory that used to process and package peanuts - now it's polished wood and exposed brick and high ceilings. My family took me there for my birthday, or Mother's Day, or both, or neither.

My birthday and Mother's Day always fall in the same week. My mom and I, both given to social martyrdom, demand that no one make a fuss and then are quietly disappointed if no one makes a fuss. "I'm sorry" "It's fine, I'm sorry" "Well, don't be!"

My senior year of high school, when other family elements were things-fall-apart-the-center-cannot-hold-ing all over the place, my birthday passed without much fanfare. I'd celebrated Saturday night at someone else's birthday party where I knew no one, tagging along with my then-boyfriend to the event at a grubby punk house in Columbus. The five of us celebrated/uncelebrated Mother's Day and my birthday at a forgettable Indian restaurant in Columbus the next day where I stared into my cup of chai, taking inventory of my first ever hangover. There were no gifts exchanged, to or from me or my mother, but I remember my parents giving me a birthday card that said something along the lines of "you're a wildflower, go change the world" and feeling very touched. Given my condition at the time (adolescence), I was unable to express my gratitude.

At some point during the next week at school, my mom, wrecked by guilt over what she perceived as a weak birthday observance, made two dozen chocolate cupcakes and brought them to my English class. She was the school nurse at the time. My class erupted into hoots and applause at the sight of the cupcakes and my mom, who is shy, did this thing she does where she shields her eyes from the attention and then follows up by sort of sticking out her tongue and crossing her eyes a little bit. My eyes welled up and she quickly disappeared back to the clinic before I could go thank her.

I have a committee chair for my thesis! Asking someone to be your committee chair is the academic version of asking someone to prom. During our meeting, he kept referring nonspecifically to my committee, saying things like "well, whoever is on your committee will need to do x thing". My heart pounded. Whoever? Why is he acting like I'm not going to ask him? Does he not want to be on my committee? Maybe he's trying to save me the embarrassment of asking him, because he knows he'll say no. Finally, I summoned the courage to ask him to be on my committee, and when he said yes, I swung for the bleachers and asked him to be my chair. I left his office feeling that way you do when you first fall in love and you're late to everything all the time. I stepped outside the journalism building and stood in one spot squeezing my eyelids shut, certain that the energy pulsing inside me would begin to press me down into the earth's crust.

My Thursday evening eventually found me on a broken couch, cuddling an affectionate dachshund mix named Li'l Bit, having been unexpectedly befriended by a Manic-pixie-dreamgirl type, a petite blonde force of nature who creates in strangers a desire to give things to her for free. It wasn't so bad really - listening to a CCR record on the wrong speed at some alien apartment while my new friend continued to conduct herself cinematically and seemingly without a shred of affectation. It's been a while since I had an evening left completely to its own devices; different faces, different houses, different bars, different streets. Things have been kind of Groundhog Day around here.