Birthday Love and F-F-Friday

Someone I care about very much is celebrating her fortieth trip around the sun today (well, she’s celebrating in earnest tomorrow, but that’s kind of inconsequential to my point).  I have known Kizz for going on 26 years now, and she has worked her way solidly into my heart.  Here are just some of the reasons I love and admire this fucking fabulous woman:

* For as much as she may not think so, she is brave and fierce.  She moved to NYC right after we graduated high school and has never looked back (she doesn’t think that is particularly brave, but I do).  She saw a life she wanted and she aimed straight for it and has never let any of the naysayers bring her down.

* She is incredibly talented.  She does it all – she sings and dances and acts, she is equally at home with an audience of little kids as she is performing for the nursing home set as she is giving a presentation in a classroom, and the width of her creative streak – and her ability to draw everyone in – is awe-inspiring.

* There’s very little that gets by her.  She is observant and thoughtful and considered, and she is one of the very first people I go to when I’m struggling with something.  Often, her insight into other people – myself, included – and situations is a little startling in its honesty and precision, but whatever shock comes with her assessment is almost always mitigated by the accuracy of it; she’s rarely wrong.

* She’s funny as hell.  Even though most of our conversation lately comes through email and instant message, she STILL makes me laugh out loud on a regular basis.  If you’re not reading her blog, you probably should be; though humor isn’t her primary outlet, there’s often still an undercurrent of funny in the way she expresses her perspective on things; she’s very good at seeing the absurd.

* She has an appreciation for the beauty in life and she sees it everywhere.

*  She loves hard and true, and she attracts to her people who do the same.  She has some of the fiercest friends I’ve ever seen in Queen Bee and Pony Express and MAB and Audio Girl and a bunch of other really wonderful people.  If it’s true that you can judge a person by the quality of their friends, then Kizz is a special breed, because the people who surround and support her are some kind of amazing.

There are so many more reasons why I love this woman, but none of them seem to fit inside the words that I have to describe them, so you’re just going to have to trust me that Kizz is one of the really good ones.

Happy birthday, my friend.  I hope that forty rocks your fucking socks off!

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