Queen B

Posts Tagged ‘birthday’

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A good life

In Big time stuff, Serious Fun on August 6, 2011 at 10:43 pm

Isn’t living a good life the best revenge?  I think it is.

I can do one better.  I have a great life.

Yesterday was my 41st birthday, and I spent it with my absolute favorite people on the whole planet.  Doing fun stuff together which ended up NOT including the Lollapalooza festival.  You know, plans change.

It went down like this:

My husband won two tickets for each of the three days of the festival from a local radio station.  We decided quite some time ago that if it was an either/or situation, he would take our son because the two of them know more of the bands and are more interested in that stuff than myself or my daughter.  If we could swing it, we planned on either winning (hopefully) or buying another three-day pass for me and getting a hotel room for the weekend to have a whole weekend birthday celebration (kids 10 and under are free to Lolla so it would have worked out with just three tickets).  Then we saw the jacked up prices on the hotels.  Ridiculous!!  Plans changed and we instead decided to sell off our Saturday and Sunday tickets, use some of that money to purchase a Friday ticket for me and head down for my birthday proper.  The hubby didn’t want to split up on my birthday.

When we arrived, it was a madhouse.  We hadn’t won a ticket for me, and we couldn’t find anyone selling them, either.  The line to get inside looked like it was taking at least an hour.  AND we could see the crowds inside, and they looked brutal, even early.  Oh, add to that the text I had gotten from my mom about flash mob race riots (against my race, incidentally) in Milwaukee and the levels of alcohol consumption by the people not yet inside the festival (very high) and it was an easy decision to sell off those last two tickets.  For a profit, of course.

Instead we kicked around the city on the $$ made from won tickets.  Hit my favorite vegan diner, an awesome guitar shop, and watched a funny movie.  My husband was sweet to me, and has treated the entire weekend as a holiday.  Lovely.

I got the right one.  For sure.  Not that there was ever any doubt.

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Big Bad Birthday

In Big time stuff, The little roomies, They're... family? on October 22, 2010 at 7:58 am

I feel like so much happened at once over the summer that I forgot to blog about half of it.  I guess it’ll have to get me through the winter.  Yes, I spoke it.  Winter.  It’s coming, people.  Get a grip.

One thing I forgot to mention was my awesome day in the Big City for my 40th birthday celebration with my parents.  We had a great day at Navy Pier.  We had a wonderful all-shrimp lunch at Bubba Gump’s restaurant (my favorite movie themed restaurant of all time), I took boatloads of pictures, we sat in the Atrium while the kids played with their helicopter toys from the Children’s Museum store, we watched the planes doing their trial run for the Air and Water Show, and we went on a tall ship.  I picked the ship.  My kids would’ve had me on the giant speedboat racing around at 95 mph land speed.  Not today my friends.

This ended up being one of my absolute favorite pictures of the day.  I can’t say exactly why.  I do love it so.  For the record, the tall ship sailboat ride is entirely too short.  Just when you get the sails up, it’s time to take them back down.  For some reason I thought we would actually, you know, sail.  Duh.  It’s probably best anyhow, we ate the giant shrimp lunch BEFORE the boat ride.

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Another sick day

In The little roomies on November 4, 2009 at 9:53 am

As I mentioned, CC came down with something awful on her daddy’s big birthday on Sunday.  She was off of her game completely, and felt really bad for “ruining” his birthday.  Totally not the case.  I personally secretly enjoy it when they are under the weather because of the following. 

  1. They love to snuggle and hang out on the couch watching tv.
  2. I get to stay home from work and pretend I’m still a stay-at-home mama.
  3. One on one time with one of my kids is always awesome.
  4. Making them feel better is supremely satisfying.
  5. My house ends up much cleaner.
  6. I get to perform the recently invented comfy pants dance.

In the morning, we did go to the walk-in sick clinic at the pediatrician’s office.  Although we have been managing her symptoms at home without the use of pharmaceuticals, I had agreed to take her to a doctor on Tuesday to see if they would give her a note to go back to school.  I knew that it wasn’t going to happen, but I promised her that we would try.  Missing two days of school so far this week, she knew that she was also missing her musical Tuesday evening.  The musical she has been practicing regularly for.  The one she was looking forward to for weeks.  The one where she had a speaking part.  The musical she was considering to be a late birthday gift for her daddy.  Let me just tell you that she cried all the way home from the Dr.’s office.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider myself a sick day success worth my weight in salt if we don’t make cookies once they start to feel better.  Yesterday was that day with little CC.  Still sick enough to stay home but feeling well enough to want to get off of the couch and do something after the disappointment of being banned from school for one more day.  We had a great time working together in the kitchen making the cookies she had given me as a gift in a mason jar one holiday or another.  There is nothing better than the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookie bars in the house on a beautiful sunny day, and it can also dry the tears of one very disappointed little princess.

Unfortunately now we are on day number three, which is just about enough for all of us.  She is supremely bored with being home, and I am freaking out a bit at being off of work too many days in a row.  We all thought that her fever was down so much yesterday that today it would be back to normal and we would go back to our regularly scheduled daily routine.  Instead, we woke to CC’s temperature back in the 101 range, the highest it’s been since this whole debauchel started on Sunday, and somewhat startling to all of us.  Tear inducing in one of us, but I won’t mention any names.  Trying to keep her on the couch has been most difficult, but if she intends on beating this anytime soon, she must LIE DOWN!!

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Birthday Boy

In Big time stuff on November 3, 2009 at 11:29 am

I called it Halloween weekend, but really it was a one-two punch of halloween and my hubby’s big 4-0 birthday.  You may have read that he got a very pretty and much loved tele. for his gift, although it was a bit early.  Sunday was the actual day, although he officially declared it “birthday weekend” any time there was something he wanted to do and was outvoted, or when he felt he was being disparaged or picked on.

The kids picked out a very handsome pork pie hat to rest upon his head.  We made note of it when we visited the Hats Plus Ltd. shop on Our Last Hurrah and I ordered it for him online.  He looked dashing, of course.  He went right off and got a haircut so that it looked even better and he was happy.  After that, my mother in law came to call, and brought with her her auntie.  The plan was to arrive after the 8:00am mass (they live like 1 hour away), but for some reason found that they needed to stop and do some shopping at our local outdoor mall ON THE WAY to our house.  I had warned them that my husband had prior plans to go to lunch with his lovely daughter for his birthday, and yet they showed up right at lunch time.  Although not at all surprising, the total disregard is still disappointing.  So he opened his gifts, chatted, and finally when I started to threaten him with my eyes because CC’s were starting to mist up from being blown off, left to have sushi as planned, 2 to 3 hours late.  Except my mother in law was still here.  She stayed, and stayed, and stayed… until right before my husband called to say that lunch was over and they were on their way home.  Now many of you enjoy the company of your in-laws, right, because maybe they like you?  Yeah, not really the case here.  You would think that I might be growing on them a tad after 14 years, but nooooo.  They never have liked me and probably never will.  I think they only spend time with us is because they’re just desperate now that the “baby” (hubby’s little brother) has moved to Texas and the two ex-sis in laws are nowhere to be found.  I don’t play like that.

Regardless, by the time the birthday boy and his lunch princess got home, she had come down with a serious cough.  Which only briefly preceded her fever.  So any additional birthday plans were scrapped and instead we all hunkered down on the couch together and smothered the littlest Frank with lots of love and attention.  I know that it wasn’t a big celebration or anything, but it was awfully nice.

Of course we insisted on a candle. At breakfast.

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Someone has a birthday coming up!

In Big time stuff, Random nonsense, Who comes up with this stuff? on August 6, 2009 at 9:17 am

The word hate doesn’t exactly fit in to the new positively positive B’s lifestyle. Dammit, because I do hate lots of things. Like the day after my birthday when I have 364 days until I get special treatment again. It’s all “back to the grind” and reality BS that I don’t care for so much. Oh, and the fact that I had serious middle of the night insomnia last night and so this morning I look like I actually did age a full year overnight on my birthday. That is some total and serious bullshit!!! I did deviate from my regularly scheduled day yesterday. I did NOT work from home. I just decided that working at WORK was enough for my danged old birthday. I stand by that decision. I had a great day, and night. I did think about the Westie both on the way to and home from work as expected, and no, I did not get a trip to Colorado as a gift to buy a new one. *Sob* Whatever. I like tent camping, and I have a really nice tent so it’ll do. I think I just miss the old days, and my old self that went along with it sometimes. Back when I actually followed the Dead. And I had unlimited amounts of free time and energy and a really cool car, or two. I had SOOOO much fun, all the time. I was always surrounded by friends and when I wasn’t working a FUN job, I believe my job was to laugh my freaking head off because that’s what I spent my time doing. And Boom Ball, but that takes too much explanation. No responsibilities? Check!! Don’t get me wrong, I love responsibility. Well, some of them. Two or three of them, anyhow. The rest can all go to hell. I think what I’m looking for is a melding of the old and the new so that I can relive some of the what once was with these new people who make my now complete.

When I got to work, people actually knew that it was my birthday, and there was cake and I had cards on my desk, which was very thoughtful and nice. It always floors me when people buy me a birthday card, because I am the absolute LAST person to give a greeting card. I’d seriously rather tie my money to a balloon and send it adrift. The boss of me (not to be confused with the mini boss of me) gave me a gigantic bar of chocolate, too! I got hugs and lots of “happy birthday”-s and then I worked. I tried to concentrate and work hard, but maybe I didn’t work quite as hard as I normally do. I am going to give myself this one break because it was my birthday. Overall it was a good day and still quite productive. I brought my cards home for CC because there were lots of dogs on them for her to cut up and reuse in other artsy type projects. I only had to pull myself out of negativity twice, and I was totally provoked, but I kept my cool and all is well.

So today is when my big roomie starts telling me “You’ve got a birthday coming up….” any time I want or say I like something. He does it every year and thinks he’s hilarious. It makes me crazy, because as I mentioned I have a super long list of stuff I want. Right now though, I have nothing to want, because CHECK THIS SHIT OUT:

Pre-margarita ride.

Pre-margarita ride.

That’s right people, I now have the sweetest ride in town. New to me old 1960′s era Schwinn in Purple (!!!) with a cool after-market basket on the front to boot that detaches so that I can skip through the meadow filling it with flowers. That is if there is any room with all the baguettes we’ve purchased at the local market. Right. My plan is to torture my ferocious beast and make her sit in there. Hubby thinks I’ll crash and kill her, and is reconsidering his decision to buy me a two wheeled bicycle rather than a three wheeler. Whatever!!! Dogs like putting their head out of the window of a car, she’ll love it once I get going, right? Yes, it was a little scary last night after I had had a couple of margaritas and rode around in the dark, but I didn’t even crash in that condition, and she didn’t fall out and I plan on being completely sober the next time. It would help if she would JUST SIT DOWN, but she’s so small that even when she stands she’s 100% inside the basket. I believe that she just needs a princess pillow to sit upon, which of course CC and I plan to provide, and we’re right as rain!

I’m sure it will be perfection in motion.


You don't say?

In Random nonsense on August 5, 2009 at 8:51 am

Why yes I do! It’s my birthday people. This is my final year of the thirties. Do you see me freaking out? NO!! No biggie, really. I mean, it’s not like anything can be done about it, right? Besides, who thought I would be around this long….

Before I found my voice.

Before I found my voice.

So instead of freaking out and crying like a baby, I’m going to celebrate like it’s 1999. No wait, I’m just going to have a regular day as far as I can tell. Hmmm. Get up, work at home, shower and dress, go into work and work some more. Once there my birthday will either be completely forgotten OR I will be hit with a barrage of people calling me old. The pool, or the pond. I have been strictly forbidden from working late, so I will sit in plenty of traffic before I get home. En route I will covet the VW Westie Weekender that’s for sale on Lake Cook Road and daydream about my old Westie and wonder again why I sold the old girl. Sometimes I hope that the big roomie will get me another one, but then I have a list of things I want a mile long. Its a sliding scale, and the Westie goes up and down in priority depending upon my mood and nostalgia for the past. Unfortunately I don’t think that this is the year of the spare, unnecessary vehicle. Bummer. Once I get home, I’m certain that it will be a much better night than it was a birth-day, because the roomies insist that it will be so. They have PLANS. Personally I don’t keep very high expectations for my birthday as a rule, but I’ll take their word for it. So according to the powers that be, I’ll have a happy birth-night!

I’ll let you in on the loot when it’s all done. Happy day!

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