Tag Archives: birthday

Aug
24
2012
Photo Friday: Harvey Wallbanger

My birthday was Wednesday. Dave and I always make each other a birthday cake.

My favorite cake is Harvey Wallbanger. This cake (boxed yellow mix doctored with vanilla pudding and the ingredients of the Harvey Wallbanger drink–vodka, Galliano, and orange juice) was a childhood favorite. In my family, there were two schools: cream cheese frosting/normal cake pan (my Gram) and powdered sugar glaze/bundt (my Great Aunt Gert…and apparently everyone else in the U.S., as evidenced by my futile search for an online recipe that matches mine–this is the closest I could find.). While I’m not going to turn down a slice of Harvey Wallbanger bundt cake with glaze on top, I’m on Team Cream Cheese (yea, Gram!). Everything tastes better with cream cheese frosting.

Bundt??? It’s a cake!

Here is Dave’s handiwork this year:

Here is some physics humor:

ME: Is the pattern on the top some sort of scientific notation?

DAVE: It’s the signature of the Higgs boson.

ME: Really?!?

DAVE: No.

END PHYSICS HUMOR.

This year’s worst birthday present: Timeline, thanks Facebook!

This year’s age: 39.

I have some thoughts about turning 39, or more accurately, being 363 days away from 40, mostly along the lines of, “fuck!”

But since my period will start anytime in the next 0 to 14 days, (it’s like broken-clockwork) perhaps I’m just generally cranky, not age-specifically cranky. So I think I’ll mull it over more before sharing my deep and meaningful and bitchy feelings.

Hey, speaking of broken clocks…did anyone else find Ato Boldon’s Olympic sprint commentary sort of bizarre? It’s like he talked until he stopped making sense. He’d just throw random shit out that sounded like it could be relevant, such as: “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Um, right. Wait, what? Hey, a stitch in time saves nine! He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day! Insert random saying mentioning time or running here!

I’m going to eat more cake now.

Sep
30
2011
Photo Friday: 38 Luftballons

I had been planning Dave’s 40th birthday celebration since January. I wanted him to have 40 gifts to open in honor of his 40th birthday.

I got the idea to decorate with balloons from Kim at Let Me Start By Saying. But even though I’m filled with plenty of hot air, I have trouble blowing up balloons. I also have a fear of balloons popping. So I went to the grocery store on the way home from work on Dave’s birthday and asked them for 40 helium balloons, all nonchalant-like.

Their response? “Are you sure?”

Thirty minutes later, I was finally leaving the store and I had trouble fitting through the doors. I had to walk about a half mile with the balloons and I learned some things about balloon transport:

1.) Tree branches pop helium balloons.

2.) There are more trees in my neighborhood than I remembered.

3.) If you decide to carry 40 helium balloons around, people will notice.

4.) When balloons pop, it will scare the crap out of EVERYONE nearby, not just you. Totally sounded like gunfire both times.

We had to pretend Dave turned 38, because two balloons popped on the way home. I had to walk in the street the last few blocks to keep them away from the trees.

Better shot of the balloons

Here’s Dave getting a kick out of me “wrapping” a picture of something he had already bought himself months ago. I agreed to “let him” splurge on some guitar-related things and there was no way that stuff wasn’t counting. I took pictures of each item and inserted each into a card for him to open.

Amused by my gifting things he already bought

Here’s the cute custom card I got him, depicting him with Chuck.

Custom card

What’s the most elaborate thing you’ve done to celebrate a loved one’s birthday?

Jul
20
2011
Law and Order: Birthday Party Unit

There should be a special place in hell for people who commit the especially heinous offense of ruining your birthday party.

My earliest birthday memory is the party during which my cousin Craig pushed me down our back stairs.

I don’t remember ever speaking to him again. Cousin Craig and his family moved away a few years later, so he crystallized in my memory as the little demon who pushed me down the stairs at my own birthday party. He is nothing more, nothing less.

My Mom sometimes tries to tell me what the adult cousin Craig is doing now, but adult, wife-marrying, kid-fathering cousin Craig is a phantom. Whenever she brings him up, I just say: “you mean, the kid who pushed me down the stairs at my birthday party?”

Then she argues with me about the veracity of my memory.

Mom may have said adult cousin Craig is a lawyer, but I can’t be sure since I don’t give a shit. But it figures he’d be a lawyer.

Because he’s a jerk.

Who pushes little girls down stairs.

At their own birthday parties.

My Mom claims ignorance of this incident. She might have a vague recollection of my falling down the stairs at one of my parties, clumsy me, but doesn’t remember that cousin Craig clearly “helped” me down to the hard concrete.

All I know is this:

One minute I was a step away from grabbing the back door handle to go inside, the next minute cousin Craig was crowding me on the stairs, and I ended up unceremoniously deposited onto the concrete slab three stairs down. Cousin Craig was smiling. Cousin Craig is the epitome of evil.

Open and shut case, he had means, motive and opportunity. He had been standing inches from me, trying to get to the same place I was going and pushing past me to get there first. And he was clearly jealous because it was my party.

But even with my sharp eye-witness testimony, and my brilliant summation of the facts, the perp got off scot-free.

What else happened at this party? Was this the year the “Dream Whip” frosting finally switched from a pink tint to my beloved green? What did I get? Hell if I know. What is burned into my brain is cousin Craig’s feigned innocence, his smug lack of remorse, the very literal pain in my ass, and the angry tears about crashing down the stairs to the pavement.

Just look at him…

Clearly a criminal master mind.

My Mom will likely have a cow when she read this. “What if he finds this?”

I say let him find it. This is my own brand of vigilante justice, just like the resolution of every episode of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” (elite squad my ass, they’re always letting the victim commit suicide or missing the clear signs that the victim or one of their loved ones is going to shoot the perp, often at the police station) in which they can’t get the bad guy.

Maybe he’ll apologize, the twerp.

——-

I wrote this post in response to this week’s writing prompt from Studio 30 Plus, which was: “Your earliest memory of your own birthday party.”