Yesterday was the QOB's birthday: she turned 80. It was a momentous occasion but she kept telling us that she didn't want a party or any celebration and in fact she said she had never, ever had a birthday party or wanted one. I doubt this highly but I know better than to argue with her, therefore, my brother B and daughter A and friend C and her boyfriend M and I all showed up at the QOB's bearing a dozen cupcakes from the Sisters McMullen and bottles of champagne and she was delighted. I also gave her the five disc set of Planet Earth - I really want this myself, so actually I'm hoping she gets bored with it very quickly and I can "borrow" it, heh heh - and she was excited. And she told us many hilarious stories and we all had enough of a good time that we're going to do it all over again on Saturday.
Saturday, you see, is my brother B's birthday and then next Wednesday it will be A's turn. I am surrounded by Capricorns and Sagittarians, go figure - it must be another piece of fallout from my previous life as the Grand Inquisitor or Hannibal Lector or something - and it means that December and January are always chock full o' birthday fun. Actually, the Sagittarians in my life are getting further and further away - my brother N is probably moving to Albuquerque to go to school and I am trying desperately to send my darling son far away or at least to Baltimore for a while so that I can stop pulling my hair out and banging my head on the wall. I've been attempting to work out a kid swap, actually, whereby A & D get young M and I get R, which I think would be brilliant since she is still not quite a teenager and far more tractable, but damn if they aren't balking. Would anyone else be interested? Will trade teenager for toddler or tween, no questions asked.
In other news, the QOB's stepdaughter O, who is also, clearly, my stepcousin, is arriving tomorrow from California. I have never met her and I am nervous and excited, because when I was a teenager and heard about her everything she did sounded incredibly glamorous and cool and I felt glumly that I could never possibly catch up. This is almost certainly still the case, sigh, but hopefully she will like Asheville, which isn't difficult and maybe even my kitchen, which is apparently tougher, since the rest of my family have made various uncomplimentary remarks ranging from "Haggard." to "Oh my god, when did you move to Santa Fe?" to "The last time I saw something like this was in the slums of Nassau." to "I would go crazy if I tried to cook in here." They are all philistines with no appreciation for cutting edge kitchen paint jobs. I must be doing something right.
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2 comments:
Hey, you're not alone in the hair pulling and head banging. A trade would be futile. Tell your brother Albucrazy as we call it is only a six-hour drive from us. He should stop here for a visit.
You have no idea how close you have come in the last week to gaining another teenager. ;-) I am on the brink of shipping him to you with a tag on his coat a la Paddington Bear. I think the only thing to be done is to ship them away.
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