Lana feels

They threw me a party! A birthday party! They plotted and schemed and planned and they made me a cake and got Julien and Deborah to come and they brought me a present and everyone sang and there were candles and ice cream and a REALLY nummy cake and Lila made me eat an awful lot of it, and it was really good. Kat made it herself, and I was completely surprised, to the point where I didn't realise who they were singing for until the second happy birthday in the song. Lila claims she'd been dropping me hints all night, but I'm not the most observant person at the best of times, and I just didn't catch it. I might have guessed if it was actually my birthday, but my real birthday isn't until the 21st, which is five days from last night, so it just never occured to me that they would. And plus since nobody's ever thrown me a surprise party before. I've had to do most of the work for my birthday parties before now. But they did. They plotted and planned and kept it a secret and figured out how old I was and everything, and I was SO happy! I've never felt so loved in my whole life! And I mean that, I'm not just being overenthusiastic. Birthday parties that your parents sort of grudgingly allow you to have and then spend the entirety of yelling at you to shut up cause they're trying to sleep and then spend the next day telling you to clean up just aren't as much fun somehow. But, they took the time to plan and plot and ask Lila how old I was and intimidate her into not telling me, and baked me an absolutely delicious cake so it was still warm when we ate it, and get ice cream and, well, and to care! And then they sang for me, and I admit I turned shy-elfey and tried to hide behind Amanda, especially since they sang it twice, but I did get all the candles out on the first breath. And I couldn't for the life of me think of a wish, so I just blew them out and wished that I would have lots and lots of times like that. Cause while I'm not overly fond of being the center of attention, sometimes it's okay. It was just so much fun! Cause after Julien and Deb left, somehow we got on the topic of handclap games like we used to play when we were 8 or 9, and Kat showed us one we didn't know, and then we compared all the ones we did know, and it was so cool cause we're all from different places (New York, west Texas, Colorado, Florida) but we all knew slightly different versions of the same ones. So Rachel and I played endless rounds of Miss Mary Mack, and figured out the song about the naked ladies dancing and smoking and killing snakes, and did the Miss Suzy Had A Steamboat one and a bunch of others. And then, when all the cake was eaten and everything was cleaned up, Lila and Rachel and I sat on one of the couches in the common room and talked about all the wonderful books we've ever read, and it's been SO long since I last got to do that I can barely remember. Rachel's read the Dragon's Blood series! I was so happy! It was absolutely hilarious, too, cause for one thing, we're two 14 year olds and one 13, sitting curled up together on a really comfy couch, me in the middle with all the legs on my lap, and we're discussing literature. Or at least books. And whenever somebody would bring up one of those books that you loved but none of your friends have even heard of and one of the others would go "oh, I loved that!" you grab each other by the shoulders and squeal and go "oh, oh!" as you remember the name of the main character or whatever. "OOOOOH, it's, um, it's, Jakkar, that's it!" and then you're all proud of yourselves and then you explain them to the other one and tell her she absolutely has to read them and you'll bring them after the break. And then you do it again, and again, and again. We stayed out there until 12:30 doing that, and what's amazing is that Tim let us because we're supposed to be in our rooms by 10:30, and usually they make us go by 11. But Tim just left at 11:10 or so, told us we could stay out as long as we were quiet so anyone trying to sleep could, and we just stayed and talked and laughed and squealed and eventually (as always) the talk turned to guys, and then we went to bed. I had more happiness last night than I think I ever have. Feeling loved'll do that.