it smells like...fireworks.

i am old. today i turn 27. technically not until 10.30 tonight, so i am still 26. i love birthdays and they have never been a big deal to me before. so why do i suddenly feel old? realistically 27 is not old at all. maybe its my life stage. i am married and with child. does that make me old? everyone around me in jolly ole' england seems to be talking about summer holidays and going traveling...not giving birth and breastfeeding. or it could be that i am still exhausted from our two weeks in America. being tired makes me even more emotional and irrational than i already am. and adding pregnant and tired on to that...well, you can all imagine just how emotional and irrational i am being.

however it does seem that i am not the only irrational one around. today i had my 28 week scan at the hospital. everything is fine. baby is healthy. and i got my results back from the mole i had removed several weeks ago. stage 2 malignant melanoma. awesome. so because of that, they decided that i should go see a 'consultant' Why they don’t just call them doctors, i dont know. so off I went to see a doctor. who determined that everything with baby was fine, but we should do some additional blood work. I have extremely small veins so it took several tries in each arm and eventually a butterfly IV in my hand to get blood. again, awesome. so did blood work, set up another appointment to see another doctor about the skin thing. and then...during the course of general conversation i managed to mention that i had been in Texas recently. yup, really smart of me. so since there has been no outbreak of swine flu in watford yet, i had to get tested for the swine flu as well. so, finally after many hours of appointments, scans and blood being drawn, i walked out of the hospital. and it smelled like fireworks.

fireworks have that really distinctive smell. a mix of rusty barbeque charcoal, burning paper, campfire and the glorious smell of summer. and that is what is smelled like. I decided that i needed to follow the smell. once i got close enough i discovered that hot asphalt also smells like fireworks. i however am choosing to believe that it was a special display of fireworks just for my birthday. (fireworks minus the pretty colours) asphalt or fireworks, it still put a smile on my face as i thought about the summer, the changes coming, the baby. and it reminded me that today is my birthday. and thats great. i love birthdays, especially mine. so i took myself shopping, bought a few new articles of clothing, watched One Tree Hill and Gilmore Girl re-runs on t.v. and cleaned up my room. at the moment i am anxiously awaiting the return of my husband so we can go to dinner. probably Fridays, because that is where we tend to end up for all special occasions. and it will be great.

because today i am 27.

and it smells like fireworks.