Cake Day

It's a nice little Monday morning.

Got up early, had coffee, caught up on the season finally of The Walking Dead.

(No spoilers)

Got an email from Tumblr that today is my one year anniversary on the social site.

For those of you who don't know what "Tumblr" is, that's fine.

It's a micro blogging social media site, but with a bit more anonymity, which means more nudity and less baby pictures than say, Facebook.

I used to post on it a lot, but never really got much traction, cause, well, it's been a long time since I've had the figure of a pin-up girl, I never did get any cool tattoos, and my Toyota Echo isn't quite old enough to be vintage . . . yet.

Anyway, along with other fun silly sites, it's now become a tradition to celebrate your "Cake Day", which we all assumed at first was your birthday, but it turns out it's the anniversary of when you joined the site.

Today would be my "Cake Day" on Tumblr.

There was a nice little note and a picture of a cupcake in the email.

It's also a tradition to post a picture of your cat on your cake day. If you don't have a cat, then post pictures of your dog. If you don't have a dog, your iguana will do, but if she's not feeling frisky enough to come out of her hole, then just go ahead and post a picture of something your proud of, like your vintage 2002 Toyota Echo.

Or your cherry tomato plant that is already starting to flower.

It's also perfectly reasonable to post things that aren't all that special, like bad drawings or a picture of what was supposed to be an omelet, but turned out to be scrambled eggs.

It might be meaningless junk to the rest of humanity, but it's proof that you got out of bed that day, and that you did something, and that for at least a few moments, you were alive.

That's kind of a sweet sentiment right there.

Anyway, I was getting a little existential, which in layman's terms means boring, and no frame of mind to start the week off with, and then I looked around my room and started to wonder, of all the crap in this particular room, would there be anything I'd be walking into Terminus with?

(You'll have to catch up on the Walking Dead if you want to get that reference.)

And since there aren't any weapons or salvageable footwear, I decided that he one thing that's coming with me is my six string.

(Now, we're just assuming here that it never came down to a moment where I had to choose my family over my guitar, cause that's a bit of a no brainer, but they're not in this room, so they don't get to be part of the game.)

The ukulele would be my second choice, cause, well, it's sooooo much lighter and a decade from now, it's going to be 100 years old, so, you know, history, but again, the game is pick one.

So I'm just going to go ahead and choose my Japanese Made Takamine steel string.

She was a present to me from my wife for our wedding, oh so many years ago. We traveled around to about twenty guitar shops and I went through every Martin, Taylor, Breedlove, Gibson, Fender, I could get my little hands around, but nothing spoke to me quite like this one did. She wasn't very expensive, she wasn't very ornate, but she sounded good and she fit in my hands lik
e no other guitar I'd ever played.

I've been noticing too recently that she's starting to get a little older. There are all kinds of nicks and scrapes and groove marks made by my furious strumming (I call these her laugh lines). The wood stain on her fret board is becoming lighter and you can clearly see where I've been playing a lot of open chords cause my finger tips have worn down the wood in places.

Her sound is also starting to change. She's getting huskier, like she'd been living off of scotch and cigarettes and there's a slight slapping buzz when I hit the bass notes that wasn't around back when she had her vestal robes.

I keep her very clean, very polished, and I take her out for a walk practically everyday. It would be impossible to quantify the amount of time we've spent together, so I won't bother, but it's enough that I know when she likes a song and when she doesn't, and when she's happy and when she's sad and I know when I'm being all Eeyore-like, I can sense her judging me from across the room.

I'd give her a name, but I haven't, and I'm not going to right this second.

But here she is, for my Cake Day, and here's to hoping she makes it through the zombie apocalypse.