ORBITS in the pandemic are odd.
But oddities have abound especially since the quarantines, it is the time of the weird and it's still ghost month, so what the heck.
Birthdays are orbits and a celebration of another year hurdled and at this time, it's an achievement, however, greeting a celebrant in the midst of a pandemic is weird, but come to think of it, it's an introvert's dream.
You just type in a smiley and you are done responding. You write a short but heartfelt greeting of thanks and you are perceived to be grateful. Easy peasy.
How do you celebrate a birthday in a pandemic? Do you do a maƱanita, and get scorned by the entire world? Do you do a private dinner and still get the wrath of the universe? I forget I am a nobody and if I do either, no one would really raise a hoot.
But being cautious and sleepy during the birthday, I limited the celebration to sorry group of four who feasted on simple fare. We are basically simpletons and takes little to make us gleeful, so we stuck to the minimum and were fine.
No beer bash like the recent years, there is a liquor ban, no gathering like what was expected, there is a virus, no loud party, there is a curfew.
So, no, no, no and no.
There is the social media birthday alert [which is turned off, but forgot I had a viber account which had the hideous thing and people started to greet me in the middle of the night which scared the hell out of me], which calls attention to yourself on your special day. I have no qualms over this, but as I had turned mine off, it was only the handful of friends who remember the actual date I was counting on.
It take just one friend to trigger an avalanche of greetings. This is true. I have proven this.
This year, it was my beautiful cousin, yes Jansen, I am calling you out. She lovingly cropped a photo and put a red heart tagging me and greeting me happy birthday... and that was enough to trigger my entire social circle to gang up on me on my Covid birthday.
There were friends who went the extra mile, and did a video greeting, singing the happy song and it was hilarious! It is always fun to be fawned on and greeted for a day, always happy to see the stickers and two word greetings. It is always good. I thank you all!
It is hard to celebrate when you know many cannot, it saps the fun out of it really. One big guilt trip, it's been a rough one but what are we to do, orbits cannot halt so, I greet myself a happy birthday and thank the heavens I can still count my blessings.
To those who remembered or were coerced to greet me, thank you all. Love, Love, Love!