Friday, July 20, 2012

Birthday Do-Over

I am hereby postponing my birthday.  Which was a few days ago.  I am retroactively post-poning my birthday.

So there, Dr. Who.

Anyway, my birthday mostly stunk on ice.  I am not an immature, 'it's all about me' kind of person on my birthday.  I do not expect that the world will stop turning, or that the birds sing only for my pleasure, just because it is the day of my birth.

Though, that'd be nice.

Mostly, I just want a nice day.  An easy day.  A day where I don't have to twist my brain, body, and schedule around like some Cirque de Soleil ham-and-egger.  I did not get this at the commencement of my 37th year.  Wanna know what I did get?

1) A phone call from my daycare provider.  She had a bad reaction to medication, and her doctors admitted her to the hospital, and planned to keep her for a few days. Ordinarily, I would just take the days off, but I was supposed to be training at a conference every day from 3 p.m. - 7 p.m., and my husband doesn't have any banked leave right now, so he couldn't take days off either.  This meant plotting out alternate work schedules with my husband so that we could tag-team caring for our 2-year-old.  My husband would go into work at dark o'clock in the morning, come home at lunch time, and then I'd be off to the conference.

(I am not an awful shallow person, worried about my job duties when someone's laid up in the hospital.  I was really worried about her.  It was only after she assured us that she was fine that we started figuring out alternate plans.)

2) A self-inflicted flat tire. I took a turn too quickly and surfed a curb with my Mazda 5. Yeah, Mazda 5s are not designed for off-roading shenanigans.  Also, my two-year-old did not enjoy the big bouncy bump and scrape, and started to cry.  Yay for me.  I broke the car AND made my kid cry.

3) I immediately took my car to the tire place, but they didn't have the tire that I needed in stock. They sent me on my way, rockin' a canary-yellow-rimmed donut where my lovely, full-sized tire used to be.

4) Since you're not supposed to drive on those donut tires for long distances or over 50 mph, I borrowed my husband's car for my drive into work.  His check engine light came on, and it was all lurchy when I was parallel parking it at the conference site.

5) The presentation was riddled with technical issues, for which I really only have myself to blame. 

6) About an hour before I left the conference to drive home, there was a punishment-from-God-sized water main break at a major intersection in downtown Baltimore.  Seriously, I think someone released the Kraken.  End result?  A commute that should've taken 15 minutes took an hour and 15 minutes.

7) To celebrate the occasion of my birth, my husband and I ordered sushi after the kids went to bed. I ordered a California roll and a sweet potato roll.  The sweet potato was undercooked.  I am probably the only person in the history of time who has complained that the grub she ordered from the sushi joint was undercooked.

I know, I know, WAH, right?  I've got all the blessings in the world, truly.  I should be able to accept a bad day without a bundle o' grumbling.  There's just something about it all piling up on your birthday, you know?

So, do-over.