things you never knew about my birthday, because why would you?

Say HEY! Today's my birthday. And it's Grace Patton's. So Happy Birthday, Grace!

But now let's talk about me. Here's some facts about my birthday. Things you never knew you never knew. 

#1 - The number one song the week I was born was really lame but the three weeks before I was born it was Kim Carnes' Bette Davis Eyes - which is a song I love - and the weeks after I was born it was Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl - another great song. Since I think Kim's song is under appreciated I'm gonna share it here. The drummer's sleeves and the slap dancing is weird, but it was 1981 and MTV was brand new, just like me. No one knew what they were doing.

#2 - My mom's water broke as she was picking beans in her garden. It's a good way to get things going, I guess, but I've always wondered what in the world a 9 month pregnant woman was doing picking beans on a hot, humid July day. 

#3 - I was conveniently born during CAT vacation. I don't think CAT vacation exists any more but it was a defining time for generations in central Illinois: for two weeks every July Caterpillar Tractor Company, whose world headquarters are twenty minutes away in Peoria, IL, would shut down its factories and many of its white collar employees would also take vacations. My dad, who has worked at CAT since he was about 19 and has hated pretty much every single day of his job, works in one of the factories. He calls it "The Hell Hole" and I secretly wish Undercover Boss would send CAT's ceo to work with my dad so he could hear all the ways CAT has screwed him over.  But I digress... Dad didn't have to take any time off work when I was born because he was already off work. 

#4 - The nurses in the hospital put the wrong tag on my arm while I was in the nursery. When they brought my mom her baby so she could nurse it wasn't actually her baby. So there was an oops. Luckily my mom had seen me right after I was born, knew it wasn't me, and told the nurse, "That's not my baby."  The nurse had to then go figure out what had happened. 

#5 - In college I worked for a software company and one of my coworkers was born the exact same day as me, at approximately the same time in the same hospital. We decided that it was probably the two of us who were switched in the nursery and that for about ten minutes I was Tawnya and she was Bonnie. I don't know what's more shocking: if it were to turn out that our concocted story were actually true or that I worked at a software company. OR that I was offered the job at the software company after the owner of said company was a judge in a local beauty pageant that I was in. OR that I got First Runner Up in said pageant. 

#6 - I was born on the Feast of St. James the Greater. The dude's got my back.