Par-tay Like It's Your Birthday

Well, yesterday was my birthday. The big 3-3. Since J was out of town, the kids and I had quite the shin-dig on our own. They brought up the Happy Birthday banner and hats, we made a cake and each licked our own spatula of batter (plus the beaters, of course). We played a rousing game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, donkey artwork courtesy of Sweetie, and a nail-biting game of bean bag toss, with Mister coming off the big winner o' starbursts.

Mister, unfortunately, was a little disappointed in the party attendance. "Mom," he said, "Don't you have any lady friends you can invite? Remember my party? I had, like, 6 friends." I tried to tell him that 2 of my 3 best friends were already there. That's all I needed. "Okay, he said, unconvinced. "I just think it would be more fun if you had more friends."

I managed to take a couple of pics, the one above on timer. Sweetie was the designated party photographer (of the cake and the blowing-out-the-candles action), but she mainly managed to capture some fabulous close-ups of body parts that you don't really want close-ups of when you're 33.

In honor of my birthday, I have to quote some from Sandra Cisneros's short story "Eleven" in her book Woman Hollering Creek. I love this story and its narrator, who sums up birthdays and age for me so perfectly:

"What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you are--underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree truck or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years old is.

You don't feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don't even feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's the way it is."

So, happy birthday to me. Maybe I will feel smart 33 when I'm almost 34. That's the way it is :)