So, for my birthday, I got to sleep in, which was really nice. The rest of my day was filled with grocery shopping, list planning, diaper changing, cooking dinner, cleaning, dispute mediation, and all of the other crappy drudgery that fills a weekend day, that day when I'm trying to get all of the stuff done I was too exhausted to do during the week. When I'm done writing this I have to work, coding 3 videos that are due on Monday, because I ran out of time during the week to get it done.
I think my life is a major example of why people should not have their kids in their thirties. You just don't have the energy anymore.
Anyway, that was that. I hit a low point at lunch time when I realized that the leftover pasta I was planning on eating for lunch was gone. Somebody else, I won't say who, had eaten it. There was nothing else in the house to eat, despite the fact that I must have stopped by Trader Joe's about 800 times on the way home from work this past week alone. So I grabbed my debit card and headed to the corner store to get a sandwich. I rounded up some items, the cashier ran them up, and then I found out that my card had expired 3 days ago and I had no cash on me. That was the low point, but things always turn around. We had a really nice afternoon lounging outside at the (kiddie) pool, sitting under the tree and dipping our feet in the water as the kids played and splashed. We could hear people in the park across the street tuning their guitars, because this evening the neighborhood held a music festival in the park. It's still going on and I'm listening to the music right now. We're a little slice of Americana right here, folks.
Birthdays in childhood often involved swimming at the lake, or in the pool, maybe a party, but always my favorite dinner (tuna noodle casserole), cake, and presents after dinner. Presents after dinner is actually a pretty great tradition to have for a birthday because it lends an air of excitement and anticipation to the entire day.
Things change as you get older, of course, but because it was a hot midwestern day today, I am remembering another hot midwestern birthday that is etched in my memory as one of the best. It was the year I turned 20. I was living in an apartment with 3 guys and they made a huge deal out of my birthday. My boyfriend at the time did this 7-day lead up in which I got presents every day for a week before my birthday. One the day of, they took me on a surprise trip, which turned out to be to a lake in Illinois. We were living in St. Louis and had to drive all the way to Illinois to find a lake for swimming, because there aren't any lakes in St. Louis. It was seriously like an hour or two away, but because swimming in the lake was one of my favorite things to do, that's what we did all day long.
There they are, along with a random kid who played with us that day, making sand castles and swimming and hanging out. I think my friends were trying to build the St. Louis Arch out of sand there. It was one of those quintessential summer days, in which you lounge around, swim, float on floaties, eat popsicles, and just exist in the moment of the awesomeness that is summer.
There they are, along with a random kid who played with us that day, making sand castles and swimming and hanging out. I think my friends were trying to build the St. Louis Arch out of sand there. It was one of those quintessential summer days, in which you lounge around, swim, float on floaties, eat popsicles, and just exist in the moment of the awesomeness that is summer.
When we got back home my friends made tuna noodle casserole for me, which might be the last time I had that particular dish on my birthday. (Tastes change, but I'll always have a soft spot for it). Also, I remember that I got two cakes. The men made me one cake, and a friend of mine who was working at Baskin Robbins that summer also brought me an ice cream cake. She and a few other friends showed up and we ate tuna noodle casserole and two kinds of cake.
How awesome is that? My friend is shirtless because we lived on the 3rd floor in an apartment with no air conditioning in St. Louis in JULY, so it was probably about 110 degrees in there. With 98% humidity. I have all these other pictures of us playing games and being goofy that night in which everybody is minimally dressed and drenched in sweat, which didn't exactly bother us a lot because we were so used to it. That's just summer.
Later we drove over to my friend's house, probably because there was air conditioning there, and on the highway we had the windows down and the radio up and I remember sticking my hand out the window and feeling the wind rushing against it. That song was on the radio, the one that goes "No sugar tonight in my coffee, no sugar tonight in my tea. No sugar to stand beside me, no sugar to run with me." To this day that song reminds me of that night, and summer, and good friends, and being young, and the feeling that you are going to stay young forever.
I don't feel that way anymore, but on the bright side, I've got this:
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