Weekend Update II

So, it’s been awhile since my last post.  Not that anybody’s reading (much) these days, but my apologies if you are.  I’ve been sick a lot, complaining a lot, depressed a lot, and now I’m relatively better so I’m up and posting again.  I know my friends are here for me and love me, and I write this blog for myself so I can complain and whine all I want if I choose, but I don’t want to be that person.  The Complainer.  The Whiner.  The Permanent Pity Party Express.  You get the idea.

On to actual information!

I had my 35th birthday on Friday.  It was also the boys’ last day of school.  Happy Birthday to me, right?  HAhahahaha!!!  Now, in general I like myself.  I think if I didn’t have depression I’d have a pretty healthy self esteem.   In our house, any celebration ending in a 0 or 5 is cause for MAJOR celebration (also your 8th, 12th, 16th, 18th & 21st birthdays).  About 12 years ago I started giving birthday parties to myself.  It’s not for the presents, I swear, but they don’t hurt!  On my birthday, my greatest desire is to be surrounded by as many of my friends and family as is possible and to have a great time.  I like games, I like water, I LOVE pinatas, the works!  The best present anyone can give me is their time, because time is the most valuable commodity we have.

But I digress…

So this year, like many of you, we are actually poor.  Not the “Dang, I can’t go shopping for my hobby” poor that we feel sometimes, but the “Crap, how am I going to feed us or gas up the car this week so I can get to the multitude of Dr. appointments we have?” kind of poor.  The birthday party fell by the wayside, and Thursday night I was gorging myself on gloom and doom so I would be ready for my birthday.   I prepared myself to be rudely awakened by my kids as I am every day, I prepared myself to not even have a teeny tiny gift from my husband, and I even made it okay that I wouldn’t be having birthday cake.  (p.s. We did have cake mix in the pantry but I wanted pound cake with strawberry stuff)  Imagine my surprise when I woke up Friday morning to hear D knocking on my bedroom door for socks and B chastising him to the tune of:  “Are you crazy?!  Mom’s sleeping!!”

Previous to that, our exchange student T had quietly knocked and asked him if I could take him to school because Dad wasn’t there.  Instantly my mind flashed, “I know he knows he was supposed to drive T to school this morning… Please, dear God, let him be at the donut store getting me a glazed donut for my birthday breakfast!”  I was saved at the last minute, Dad appeared to take him to school, and then not long after the “Are you crazy?!” incident guess who came in to wake me up with the morning paper, a juice box and a ginormous glazed donut???

After my delicious breakfast in bed I headed over to my PC where I was greeted with a multitude of birthday wishes from friends near and far on FB and spent the morning playing a little bit of a game.  That afternoon I had to take Mom to a neurologist in Modesto.  Right before we left the mail came and I received a funny card from my Uncle S with a gift card inside.  Yay, In-n-Out for lunch!  We went to the appointment, the doctor was fabulous, (I’ve never been able to say someone had a good bedside manner until now!), and headed home.  Upon our arrival I noticed a card addressed to me on the dining room table.  Honey told me when he had gotten home from work he found it on the doorstep sitting under a bottle of sparkling grape juice.  More birthday greetings from “Anonymous and Anonymous Friend” with a huge gift card to Red Robin!  Then, thanks to there being no Regal or Edwards Cinemas in Butte, Montana, Ana Banana had sent me some movie passes they had bought when they still lived here and Honey asked if I wanted to go to the movies!  We ended up seeing “Prince of Persia”, but I have to tell you this cute thing about Honey and the movies…  Knowing that I have been really bummed out these last 2 weeks he thought I’d want to watch something really funny and had planned for us to go see “Shrek the 4th”.  He prepared for this by watching Shrek 3 while Mom & I were out at the doctors!  Now, for those of you that know my husband well, does this not seem like a movie franchise that he would typically not be interested in?  Turns out, not so much.  He loves them!

So in the end, I had probably one of my most favorite birthdays.  I like my birthdays, every one, but I can count on one hand the number of birthdays in my adult career that have been truly special and I’m happy to say that this is one of them.

Thank you, all of you, especially Anonymous & Anonymous Friend, for all your birthday wishes.  Thank you for sticking with me through thick and thicker, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, ’till death us do part.  I  love you all!  (except for you, over there.  You know who you are.)