You say it's your birthday....

...buh-na-na-na-na-naaaaa-na-nuh.....

Yes, yes I do. Hooray, hooray, I'm one year older today than I was yesterday. Funny, I only feel a day older. Temporal anomaly, alert the...whoever deals with that sort of thing.

The first part of my day involved getting my sorry butt out of bed. That was a chore. We were up late having a family cuddle night, and then T went to sleep in the recliner because he has lung aliens, so I hogged the bed. This means sprawling from corner to corner in an attempt to flatten out the hump in the middle that inevitably forms when two people of larger-than-they-should-be size share a bed. Whenever I can I try to sleep in the middle of the bed and moosh that sucker down. I watched The King and I for a bit, too, while dozing off. Around two-thirty. Yeah.

The upside to the late hours was that Bird slept quite late, too. I was less than thrilled to log online and be greeted with the headlines about the lad who shot all those other kids in Illinois. Sad. It knocked the happy right out of my blogging for a bit. I'm still sad about that, but...it's so easy to distance yourself emotionally when you are distant physically, too. And it is my birthday, and if I could sit through the death of a beloved friend (AIDS related cancer) in the morning and still hold my birthday party later that evening (which happened about ten years ago on my birthday) then I can manage to find some nice things about today.

I had a leisurely bowl of Froot Loops (take that, pancreas!!) and a Diet Coke Plus for breakfast. You were dying to know that, weren't you? Then mum got here, and she made me open gifts. Really, she made me - nearly twisted my arm right off at the shoulder. She's like a kid at Xmas, only with the giving, not the getting. Heh. First I opened this:

Yes, a waffle iron!! Score!! I've wanted one for ever so long, but I'm too cheap to buy one myself. This one is heavy and could double as a home defense head-thwacking device. She even thought to include this:

That's right, waffle mix. Don't worry, I'll know how to make them from scratch before we run out of mix. Gods bless the Internet. Thank you, Al Gore!

Next, I opened this:

Which foreshadows things to come this evening (and a whole other post). Not that we needed foreshadowing, since we've been planning this particular meal for months.

Then there was this:

My sister-in-law introduced me to these. She's British. They have lots of fun stuff to eat. Mmm, Hob Nobs. We had some with tea a little while ago. Isn't my Mum the best? She knows these are like crack to me.

And then there was this:

This is a candle box that our friend Vivian made. She's talented. When I win the lottery, I want to hire her to do windows all over my over-priced, custom-built, artsy-fartsy house.

After this extravaganza - mum really lost her ever-lovin' mind this year, huh? - we had to go get some fresh corn. Yes, in the middle of winter. What, you can't get fresh corn in the middle of winter? Huh. Imagine that.

Why do we need fresh corn? Ah...patience, Iago. That's another post, too.

We got some other stuff, too. Look:

Who can resist fifty percent off roses? Please don't get excited about the silver tray - it's part of my polishing therapy. You know, that little quirk I mentioned in the meme I got tagged with? People let me polish their silver. T's mum gave me the tray to polish and just forgot to ask for it back. Heh. I like using it, it makes me feel more posh and less white-trash middle-class. Here's another beautiful picture:
Doesn't Mum look thrilled? She did this just for me. She was laughing, truly, and then threatened my life when I told her I was absolutely going to post this. I fear no evil. Also, I am pretty sure she's not armed right now. Although the thorns on the rose were wicked - I had to warn her about them so she wouldn't accidentally pierce her lip. She's got tattoos but isn't really the peircing sort.

And then we sat in different room and I posted that Portrait of Modern Living post just below this one. What a day so far, huh?

Just wait until you see the cake Mum brought. Good lord. It's ridiculous. Really.