The Birthday Tally

So today was my 29th birthday. In and of itself, not a big deal. But I'm a firm believer that whenever possible, the birthday girl/boy should be treated a little nicer, have an easier day, on that particular day. Here's the numerical rundown of my special day:

- Thirteen. The number of online greetings I received from friends and family via MySpace and Facebook. Yes, I'm a social networking whore. So?

- Three. The number of actual birthday cards I received in the mail. One was from our leasing office. It read, "Darcie, Hope you have a great 1." Edumacated people they have working in there.

- Two. Number of well-wishing phone calls I got today. One was a nice call this evening from my brother-in-law. The other was my stepmother-in-law who wished me a happy birthday and then proceeded to tell me that she and my father-in-law, whose birthday is this coming Sunday, were having her oldest daughter's family down to have cake and ice cream for my father-in-law's birthday. Every year since I've been out here, we've always celebrated my birthday in conjunction with his, except for last year when he turned 50. This year: not so much invited and in fact, getting my nose rubbed in it. I guess this'll teach me to forget HER birthday in times of massive amounts of personal stress and chaos.

- One. One gift, received via UPS from my mom by way of The Cracker Barrel, which is her place of employment. It was actually a huge box with a bunch of culinary goodies for all of us and then my gift: a Pepto-Bismol-pink t-shirt that was very telling of either my mom's memory slipping or her complete misunderstanding of the inherent joke of the shirt:



**By the way, if you actually know my mom and happen to see her, please don't mention this. I don't want her feelings hurt, I do appreciate her gesture with the gift, and if you know my mom, you know this isn't a can of worms that needs opening.

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To be fair to my husband, we'd already discussed that I'd celebrate my birthday proper this weekend, after payday. With that in mind, I wasn't expecting anything on the homefront, other than a little R&R...which didn't really happen for me. I had to work, so Boy was here, and Bubba was a screamin' Mimi today, he just wouldn't stop yelling and crying! I think it's his next set of teeth coming up.

When I ran to the store this evening, Rob had Beth make me what turned out to be the best card I've ever received.


For those that aren't familiar with a three-year-old's script: Happy Birthday Mom"

My little family unit? Yeah, we're not quite as refined as the upper echelons of society. We like our music loud, we tell crude jokes, and we'll eat our dinners on the couch with "Seinfeld" on...but we got a lot of love and no amount of shit from the universe can destroy that. I could prattle on about the negative points in my day but with a birthday card like that, who can complain?