Whose Birthday Is It?

To me any birthday is worth celebrating as I'm proud of every one of my years but those birthdays ending in a five or a zero make for a "big birthday" worth celebrating even more so in my mind.  I don't know why I especially like those years ending in zeros and fives but I do.

It's a milestone birthday ending in a five for me this week....thirty-five to be exact.  And I've decided to do my birthday in style this year by going out to a nicer dinner with about fifteen friends at a local winery / restaurant.

I prefer to celebrate my birthday with a smaller group of people as to me it's more important to spend quality time talking with each person in a small group than only a little bit of time with each person within a large group of people.  It's all about quality over quantity to me.  I get more enjoyment personally interacting with a small group who have come out to celebrate with me than if I'm among a large group where I feel like I barely got to say more than hello and good-bye to everyone who made the effort to attend a birthday dinner in my honor.

And that is where there seems to be a disconnect.  One of my friends called me out tonight because I didn't invite everyone I've ever met (and what she really meant was everyone SHE'S ever met) to attend MY birthday dinner.  She mentioned several people by name who she felt I should have invited.  I then had to explain that, while I think the world of everyone in our group, I had to have a cut-off somewhere.  I had to explain that there comes a point where if you invite person A you then have to invite person B which leads to person C and, since I barely know person C, I can't say that I really feel the need to have that person at my birthday dinner!

I don't mean for there to be any hard feelings among those who didn't get invited, but if we're celebrating my birthday and I'm the one doing all the planning, shouldn't I have a bit of a say in who gets invited?  And really, I haven't said anything to those who weren't invited from my end, so how exactly do they even know that they're not invited?  I mean really, come on, whose birthday is it?!?!