It’s my birthday! It’s my birthday!
It’s my birthday! It’s my birthday!
Current mood: 
ecstatic
There are a lot of people out there drinking green beer on my birthday. Not in my honor, of course, but in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. So I will tell you about the interesting people I met today because having my birthday on this holiday gives me superpowers and I just seem to speak up when normally I wouldn’t.
We started the day off very early… at 1:30am we got a call from our neighbors down the street who go to our church. They needed someone to watch their two-year-old while they went to the hospital to have a baby. I should clarify that we have met them before and our relationship with them is still very new, but I had offered for them to call us if they needed help if the baby came early. And even though I have been trying to get back to a more normal sleeping schedule (midnight is early for me), it’s a good thing that they chose to call us because we were up.
I was worried that this little girl would freak out when she woke up in some strange place, but I didn’t have to worry. She loves Sarah. She will run out into the road in front of speeding cars to get to her. She ended up waking up right when her dad left her with us. She hung out with Sarah for a bit, but they were not going to sleep. I didn’t want Sarah to be too tired for my big day, so I took the little girl (name withheld to protect the innocent) to the living room and held her, in the dark, sitting on the couch.
At first I was telling her stories, but she kept asking me, “What’s that?” and “What’s that noise?” If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you know that I cannot hear without my hearing aids. I have no idea what noises she was referring to—couldn’t even lie my way through it because kids know when you’re fibbing. Finally, after an hour and me deciding to be quiet, she fell asleep. And I trudged off to my own bed. So that was the first person I met on my birthday besides my own family.
My family rigged up a bunch of clues in the house for me to follow around the house which eventually led to my birthday presents. Sarah made a glittery green card with green buttons on green construction paper, and when opened, a shamrock popped up. She also drew me a seascape picture complete with bright sun, sandy beach, a pelican, a dolphin, a tiger shark and a jelly fish. I could tell that a lot of work went into her creations.
Zack made a few presents for me out of green construction paper and they were wrapped up with tissue (the kleenex kind) and construction paper bows. One was a fish with a smiley face, a couple of pen covers (cone shapes for putting on the end of a pen), and a shamrock. He also made a card that said “Happy birthday mom” with shamrocks all around it… the shapes look like pieces of popcorn with a line drawn towards the text. He said, “It’s fireworks and they’re exploding.” He also made a white skeleton out of cut pieces of paper and tape, in fact, one of the legs had fallen off when I first picked it up and Zack said in a deadpan voice, “He’s missing his leg,” but we found it and stuck it back on without any trauma. One leg has a bump where the knee should be, but the other one doesn’t. (Zack is one of my favorite artists, by the way. The boy is so dang creative. What a skeleton has to do with my birthday, I’ll never know.) The inside of my card said, “Happy birthday mom! I can do any thing for you. circle the one you want me to do for you. massage, kiss and hug, get you a drink, read a book. you can do these in order.” I redeemed the kiss and hug on the spot.
Seth’s card had his own handwriting on the front that said “HAPPY BIRTH- DAY MOM” in red marker on green construction paper. There was also a red heart colored in very nicely (and he has improved greatly, because you can actually tell it’s a heart). So it’s kind of a Christmas/Valentine/St. Patrick’s/Birthday card… until you turn it over. The back has a squiggly line roughly in the shape of the State of Texas which is labeled in Sarah’s handwriting “Texas”, a couple of red hearts, an alien, and earth. The alien has six fingers on each hand, three eyeballs, and two antennas. I loved his explanation of his drawings, and I’ll probably scan the alien dude. Another piece of paper had Sarah’s handwriting on it and states “Here is a ticket for you. Give it back to me on any day, and for a week I will listen to you the 1st time you tell me to do some-thing. 
, Sethy” and the bottom has a drawing of an active dollar.
[ok, in the interest of time... only 45 minutes left for my birthday, i'm going to skip the transitional sentences that make my prose flow...]
Another person I “met” today was a man we know from church who is moving and getting rid of a bunch of stuff. We bought a year’s supply of food storage from him that is only 3 years old, four 55 gallon water storage barrels, and a couple of bikes. This is a very serious man who does not smile very much. After loading everything up and handing over the hard-earned cash, we started talking about St. Patrick’s Day, and to my horror, I noticed that I wasn’t wearing any green (see I had to change out of my strawberry jammies that have green on them and threw on comfortable clothing to get the job done). I sucked in my breath and almost shouted, “I’m not wearing any green!” and then I looked him up and down and noticed that he wasn’t either… so I pinched him. Heh heh. My bday is never complete without getting to pinch someone! He didn’t pinch me back… guess my super(green)powers were working up a force field. Later, Josh told me that I cheered him up (not Josh, the other guy, but I don’t want to put his name and besides I’m trying to hurry!)… he did crack a smile or two.
Later on, when we dropped off the little girly girl to meet her new baby brother at the hospital, we ended up in an elevator with two black women wearing scrubs. One was wearing kelly green scrubs and the other older one was wearing purple ones. I said, “Has anyone pinched you yet today?” and just as I was edging up to get closer and do it, she rounded her head around and gave me this look. You know how only black women can give you this look and the top of their head is facing you and they’re looking through their eyebrows at you? It’s the look that says, “Oh, no you di’nt.” Dude, she scared me. My immediate thought was, ‘no wonder nobody dares to pinch her.’ She then announced to all of us that she was wearing green underwear. While that was TMI especially for the young darlings with me, I felt the tension drain out of the air and we were able to exit the elevator with all limbs intact.
This might be a little tangent, but Josh totally surprised me today. I thought he made a mixed CD for me and that was my gift right? Wrong. He took the van on Friday because he said the truck’s wheels were getting worse and he was slipping all over the road (it was raining this week) and it would just be safer for him to take the van to work while I kept his truck (both are covered in fine yellow pollen courtesy of the pine trees that tower behind our house and I happen to be allergic to… and every year around my birthday, my eyes itch and I sneeze a lot… just thought I’d throw that tidbit of info for you to get the full effect). And I had no alarm bells go off at all — usually I can tell when he’s up to something. So I got in the van today and noticed a remote control sitting there and I thought, “Why would Josh bring the remote for his truck’s stereo in here?” Then I looked up and saw a CD player that looked a lot like the one he has in his truck. So I said, “Honey, you left your CD player in here.” (Seriously, I can be so thick sometimes.) And then it dawned on me that Josh had pulled off the impossible.
OK, moving on!!
The last person I will mention [and I'm skipping all the fun stuff we did today... like ride a carousel, get haircuts, buy one cool thing from Target, movies with large drinks and popcorn, mall food, and Cinnabon—need I say more? it was a perfect day] is the little tyke who was born on my birthday. He was less than 12 hours old, and I got to hold him! He slept like a rock, yawned up a storm, and cried a newborn cry, and rooted around for some food… all in the 20 minutes or so of being there. What a miracle. So I told his mom that even though he’s not really my present, I’m going to pretend like he is.
Afterall, I have superpowers on this day.
Posted on March 17th, 2007 by trish
Filed under: Life