Havin' a Good Time

"Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed, my life's a mess
But I'm havin' a good time."

- Paul Simon "Have a Good Time"


My birthday was yesterday. I turned 35. Now I'm no math whiz, but I'm pretty sure that means I'm halfway to 70.

I guess it was a big fat smack o' karma from all the times my sister and I didn't go balls-out for our mom's birthday. Not that I wanted anybody to go balls-out, I just didn't want the day to suck, ya know? On my birthday last year, Hubby and I got in a big stupid fight because he kept yelling at the kids to behave so I'd have a nice birthday (???), then the next day I had to drive myself to the ER (with the 3 kids) with a kidney infection. So it could have sucked pretty effin bad and still been better than last year.

So, like every other morning, the kids were up before 6, wanting their various morning fixes of apple juice and chocolate milk. So when Hubbypoo woke up and said "you stay in bed and I'll bring you breakfast", I had to chuckle a little, since I'd already been out of bed and eaten, but he had taken the day off from work to hang out with me so I was looking forward to that.

We would have gone out to lunch or done something special, but we knew that the money was tight, so we just stayed home, which was fine because the weather suddenly turned Uber-shitty. Craptastic Weather and Money Drama are to me what Rainy Days and Mondays were to Karen Carpenter, and we all know what happened to her. Don't worry though, I love food too much to be anorexic. But I digress.

Just for laughs, I logged in to the bank website and saw that we were charged $66 in bounced check fees. So that's where my birthday money went. Sigh. So I went into the kitchen and made lunch for hubby and me. Beebie had a 1/2 day at school, and as soon as she got home, she asked if she could go to her friend's house. R said "well, it's your mom's birthday..." to which she replied, "well, are we going to do anything??" I told her to just go, figuring it would be more pleasant without her kvetching in the house.

We spent the afternoon searching the house for whatever spare change we could find. Then I went to the grocery store and paid for 2 gallons of milk in nickels and pennies, praying nobody would get in the line behind me and give me grief about it. I told the cashier that I was going to pay creatively, and that I had gotten into her line because she looked nice. She was nice. I told her it was my birthday. It was my birthday and I'd pulled apart sofa cushions to find money for milk.

We had frozen pizza for dinner and DH and I made a chocolate silk pie from a mix, that the kids didn't like. Hubby cleaned the kitchen and then I suggested we all work together to clean the living room. Nat freaked. "It's not only MY mess in there!!" Well, I never even walk in that room because it's so full of crap I can't get from one end of the room to the other, so I know it's not my mess either, and hey, it's my birthday and I'm going to be cleaning in there too. By the way, I also told her that if I find Danny before she does, I'm selling him on Ebay.

I got one birthday phone call from a friend, emails from a couple of people, and I got a card from my parents and one from my in-laws, but why do birthdays lose meaning as we become grownups, and especially parents? I couldn't even let R see how disappointed I was in the day because it wasn't his fault. It wasn't anybody's fault, it just sucked and I spent the evening trying not to cry.

On the plus side, here's what I was able to open, pretending they were birthday gifts:

- a book from PaperBackSwap.com (The Oprah Book about the dude in rehab)

- 3 bags of clothes from Freecycle

- a package of fun yarn I got in a swap

So, yay! I'm trying to force myself into a positive attitude but I'm just really bummed and my only consolation is that right now I'm as far away from my next birthday as I can possibly be.