Sunny Birthday

Birthdays are a funny thing. If you make too much of them, the day goes by too fast. If you make not enough out of them, the day crawls along like all the other days. All you really need is a cake to balance this equation. And as Peggy commented yesterday, when you're the mom, you have to arrange for your own cake.

But the boys were sick, giving them the same energy level I have, which means we sat on the couch and watched a show about shipwrecks, then a show about tornados, and finally a show about the moon--did you know the moon formed when the earth collided with another planet? I hope that doesn't happen again.

So the cake making and buying went out the window. I already had a cake anyway at my birthday party on Saturday. Since we'd already celebrated, yesterday could be a low-key birthday. It's not like I was really any older yesterday than I am today. Every day we march closer to our death. Okay, that sounded a little more dramatic than I intended. What I mean is, I'm happy to turn 30. I don't feel old or anything. No older than usual, anyway, due to forgetting words for things like that dry stuff you eat for breakfast. My aunt calls those moments "fetal steals" because they usually happen when you're pregnant. But they also happen when you have small children.

It really was a perfect day. The boys took three hour morning naps due to their sickness and then we tackled a project outside. When you're a kid, you're always up for a project that involves water, even if your tummy hurts. So we washed the sandbox--a plastic boat that smelled like when you bring a turtle home from a farm in a bucket with a little pond water and grass in the bottom and drive for an hour in the hot Kansas sun with the air-conditioning broken in the car and the turtle thinks he's at a rest stop the whole time, so to speak.

Turtles might have been living in the sandbox. Three of our pet turtles ran away--or walked away, rather, while getting their exercise in our backyard. I sent Justin to post flyers I made for Coopy, my favorite turtle. The flyer had little strips of paper with our phone number that you tear off, and a turtle drawing. Not a photo, because let's face it, if any turtle was walking around Waldo, it was probably ours. I never saw these posters anywhere. Although it's possible that they were tacked up side by side on Finn's Waldo Bar community bulletin board. I haven't checked there.

Coopy is the only turtle who would sit and watch T.V. with me, so naturally I grew attached to him and await his return. Snappy, on the other hand, would hiss at me as if to say, "If I were a snapping turtle, I'd bite your head off and use it as a beach ball." It probably didn't help that I'd smile condescendingly and say, "But you're not a snapping turtle, Snappy. And that's the irony."

So we disinfected the possible turtle hide-out. Now that will be the baby pool and the holey pool will be the sandbox. It was a sunny day and everyone got along. Have you ever noticed that when kids get sick they act like grownups and when grownups get sick they act like babies?

The boys played in the hose and two cardinals splashed around in the puddles at the edge of the driveway. J.J. splashed at the side of the sandbox lid, which Richie had filled with water for him.

Justin and I were supposed to go out for dinner but stayed home. When kids are sick they need three things to get better: T.V., 7-Up and their mommy. But Justin and I did have carry-out and watched Lost (Are they in a mental institute or not?) We didn't have cake, but we had Klondike bars. So that's special.

It was the perfect day--didn't go by too slowly or too fast. I made a point not to do anything annoying, like call a place where you have to press 1 for customer service and 2 for sales and 3 to get disconnected and 0,0,0,0,0 until someone who doesn't want to talk to you talks to you. I got to talk to my friends and family on the phone. It was the kind of day you should create everyday but only end up creating on your birthday.