It’s a week until my birthday. Normally, I’m all “Only 7 shopping days left”. In fact, normally, I start the birthday countdown three months before the big day in order to make sure there’s lots of shopping time to get me a totally fab gift - I may be spoiled, but I can be accommodating, especially if it means getting more & better gifts. Normally, I have a Birthday Week, feeling that one day just ain’t enough.

But this year, for the first time since I can remember, I don’t really care about it. Can you believe this? It’s not because I’m worried about getting older. I’m still hopelessly immature and feel like a girl, even though I’ll be turning 42 next week. I feel better about myself than I did 20 years ago, and I wouldn’t be 30 or 25 or 18 again for anything (though I’d love to spend a summer week in Maine as a 9 or 10 year old, circa 1970). Construction workers and truckers and college boys still notice me, and yesterday, a girl who looked around 25 hit on me in Whole Foods. So it’s not that, though I am of course aware that my cute days are numbered and I better enjoy them now.

I’m not sure what it is. Part of blogger’s block? The birthday malaise suffered by many, if not most people? Maybe it will go away with sufficient application of champagne and cupcakes. Oh, and maybe sparklers!

The last two times I have opened the front door, there has been a large grey pigeon waddling away in horror, as if I caught him/her trying to break in.

What do I have that a bird could possibly want? And how does a pigeon manage to look so guilty? If I did catch the delinquent avian actually committing whatever crime is on its bird brain, any jury, even one of its peers, would convict in record time.

Of course, it might just be a location scout. One came by last week and wants to film for a couple of hours next month.

I don’t know if it’s part of the whole blogger’s block thang, but I seem to be incapable of accomplishing much, if anything at all, during my waking hours these days. Yet the time blurs by magically. Where the hell did the week go? I think, as I realize that today is in fact Friday again.

Here’s the sum total of my accomplishments du jour:

- Sent a birthday card.

- Actually put in contacts and applied make-up for a change.

- Bought a pair of completely adorable and utterly unnecessary shoes.

- Replenished the wine supply.

- Tried to call my Mom (no answer, so no credit, since she doesn’t have an answering machine or voicemail).

- Got money out of the bank.

That’s pretty much it, and it’s almost dinner time. Am I in a time warp or a wrinkle in time or something?

Is there such a thing as blogger’s block? We’re all familiar with writer’s block, suffered by some of the best - Kafka, Flaubert, Plath - and, come to think of it, neurotic writers of our time. I’m certainly neurotic enough. Maybe writer’s block and blogger’s block be the same thing?

As blockages go, I guess it’s not all that bad. I mean, it’s definitely better than a blocked artery or even (to someone as vain as me) a blocked pore or a blocked sink requiring the expensive and icky services of a plumber.

All I know is that I seem to have lost the inspiration and ability to write like I used to, though I don’t know why. Do they make Drano for bloggers? “Unblock that pesky muse once and for all!”