Now I want birthday cake, and it's not even my birthday.

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Next week.

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You think I'd be more excited about cake, but it's yellow with chocolate icing. Which was the birthday boy's call, and his right, but damn it. Not my favorite. I wanted a bakery cake with about five inches of buttercream icing. And my flippin' birthday's not till April.

That means your half birthday is in October. You should have a half a cake. Mine was just six days ago. I neglected to have half a cake, and look what happened to me. CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE

For my pillow, I put the larger of the 2 bumps under my neck. (Switch around for if you sleep face down so you don't choke.) But then I sleep like a maniac and hardly ever use it the way it was intended. I'm sure it will tell you on the packaging how to use.

I don't think I've slept face down too much since puberty. Thanks, d. I will make sure I feel like it's supporting my poor old neck, since that's the point.

And no, I haven't seen a doctor for my shingles for a couple of years. I got my first outbreak at 15, and since then have gotten at least 1 outbreak every year, sometimes as many as 3 in one year. Sun was the first cause, now it's usually just a stress reaction. Annoying, but usually pretty mild and nowhere near my eyes, just along my cheekbone. This particular outbreak seems worse than usual, but it still only lasted less than a week in duration so I don't worry about antiviral meds.

Oh, man. I didn't realize you could have more than one break-out. I know it's the chicken pox virus reactivating, but I never thought about it returning. My grandfather had it when I was a teenager. It was very close to his eyes, close enough that they hospitalized him. My mother had it a few years back, but it was around her middle.

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I'm actually cold right now. It's 70 here today, I think, and sunny, but there's no humidity at all, and this house is completely shaded. The door's open to let the light in, but I think I actually have to close it. My nose is getting pink.

I neglected to have half a cake, and look what happened to me. CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE

There you go. A cautionary tale if I ever heard one.

Cindy totally enables my cake addiction. She's a cake pusher, I tell you. Just one of the many reasons I adore her, of course.

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Yeah, my dad gets outbreaks when he's stressed. Which is about the last thing you need when you're already, you know, stressed.

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AmyLiz, you realize when we finally meet, they'll be able to track us by a trail of cake crumbs and cigarette butts.

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That's awful, brenda. I think I won't tell my mother. She got hit hard. She took the anti-viral meds when diagnosed, but for a couple of days, she thought she just had a back ache. Then she saw the break out as it spread to the front. Not good.

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AmyLiz, you realize when we finally meet, they'll be able to track us by a trail of cake crumbs and cigarette butts.

Bwah!

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There are a good number of people who get a VERY bad break-out and suffer horribly, but it doesn't reoccur. If you look it up online, shingles seems to really only hit older people, and tends to be only once. In my experience there seems to be a fair amount of younger people also getting it, and for some of us it recurrs. Most of the time people get it along their trunk/torso/sometimes arms or legs. It's much rarer on the face, and I think very rare (and dangerous) in the eyes. I think it's worse on the torso because the outbreak travels along a nerve pathway, and some of those can be extensive.

Good news is that you can only infect someone who has never had the chickenpox, and even then you aren't terribly likely to as it isn't as virulent as the actual varicella zoster virus. You cannot get shingles (herpes zoster) from anyone; only if your own body has trapped the virus from your own chickenpox experience in a nerve root and then decides to play will you have an outbreak.

I no longer get any of the warning signs (tingling and sore glands, then blisters). Mine starts in with the blisters right away, and then my glands kick in. This time, the virus also made me really weepy, which was not actually a lot of fun. I don't remember it doing that before.

Maybe I should start chiming in about a fun topic, like cake. I like a cranberry sachertorte for the holidays. It's yummy and pretty, without being TOO difficult to make. Very dense and rich, though. The last actual cake I made was a citrus yellow cake with lemon buttercream frosting, and I used some leftover cranberry pie filling to sandwich inbetween the layers. So very tasty.

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Random meme.

My hair is at the point where I am growling at it in frustration. Whenever it gets past a certain length, it starts getting dry and fragile and split-endy and generally unattractive. I have a hair appointment at 4:45 today, and I am SO excited. I'm not chopping it short (sorry, Hec), but definitely a few inches shorter with lots of layers.

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