Rebecca A. Foster

"Happy birthday, my darling sweetness. I find you so charming and lovely, it breaks my heart we can't be together *kiss*" (Wait...you couldn't hear it? Weird.)

For my birthday later this month, I'm spending a few hours at a Japanese spa. I've booked an hour and a half hot stone massage, a facial and a pedicure, courtesy of a gift certificate I received for Christmas. What I love about the spa: the comfy robes, soothing music, teas to drink, my awesome massage guy (wonderful strong hands), the steam room and sauna, and the Japanese tea garden where you can sit and relax between treatments. Sometimes I feel bad about spending that much money (especially not my own) on trivial expenditures. Don't really need those things. But last year on my birthday is when my dad's doctor told us it appeared the cancer had spread to the outside of his lungs and could start to choke off the arteries within days. (It was 20 days. He fought 'til the end.) It was a horrible day. The year before I spent my birthday with him in his hospital room, then took a red-eye home to San Antonio. I cried the whole flight. I felt so alone and sad. Two no...