Graduations. Apple cakes. Road trips in multiple cars with the family where it's imperative that one knows the universal symbol for "time to stop and get gas." Sleeping on an uncomfortable sofa and a squillion digital cable channels. Perhaps a trip with Allison to The Village for $.45 sweaters. A visit with charming, if needy, puppies. Too many diet cokes. An inordinate amount of caustic sarcasm. Spiels of laughter.

In other words, I'm going home.

And while I'm away, whirlygirl is turning two. On Sunday, in fact. Two years of poems spun from the "little bits of life that seemed incidental at the time." Four re-designs, endless wonders, and one incredibly odd karmic twist leading to true love.

Definitely enough magic to deserve your fabulous birthday wishes, don't you think?

In a span of 10 telephone minutes I went from explaining how to scope a project and write a proposal to blowing bubbles from the coolest diamond shaped bubble rod and miniature champagne bottle bubbles to telling him how incredibly sexy I find his eyes to be to squealing breathlessly at the sight of my first firefly this season.

He thinks I'm versatile.

It'll be a little disconcerting to attend the medical school graduation party of the boy who used to play Robin, Boy Wonder in my childhood escapades. The boy who taught me how to whistle and had the first Atari of anyone on my block and who used to keep pulled teeth in a jar on his windowsill. A boy who used to come over late at night and stand outside my window after working in the onion ring trailer at the fair, which led me to smell him before he even tapped to get my attention.

A boy I haven't seen in over 6 years... who I suddenly have to call Michael Johnson, M.D.

I'm sorry. I just can't stop laughing.