It’s been 30 years since I’ve been able to be in Hawaii on my birthday, but one of these days I’ll have to get back there and really celebrate the hell out of it. I have vague memories of being about 6 or 7, and thinking the parade and all the other Kamehameha Day excitement was because of my birthday. I was a special kid.

Yesterday — the lovely Kylanath’s birthday! (hope it was a wonderful one!) — was one of those days when nothing seemed to go right for me. The drive into work was nerve-wracking due to strong wind gusts…and trust me, there’s nothing fun about crossing a bridge with steel grating on a two-wheel vehicle in wind gusts of varying strength and direction. It sure does wake you up, though; I barely needed my coffee after that bit of adrenalin. After an insanely busy day at work where our call volumes were 5 times normal (partly because a bunch of the senior operators called out sick), I got home only to immediately turn around and have to leave. Lyse had a monster migraine and had to go to the ER. We were there for five & a half hours, and didn’t get home until nearly 11pm…which is past my bedtime, anymore.

The one possibly amusing moment of my day yesterday was a phone call from my youngest demonspawn, on her last day of school. She was lucky enough to catch me on my lunch break. There was a ton of background noise, so I had trouble distinguishing exactly what she was saying. It went something like this:

Anxiety: “Can I bring home a biology [garbled word that might be "textbook"] for the summer?”
Me: “Sure.”
Anxiety: “Yay! You have to tell my teacher that it’s okay! I’ll put him on the phone.”
Teacher: “I just need to get your permission on this directly.”
Me: “Sure.”
Anxiety: “Thank you, Mommy! I love you!”

About two whole seconds after the line disconnected, my brain’s review mode kicked in and processed what that garbled word was. It wasn’t “textbook.” It was “tarantula.”

Shit.

(But Happy Birthday to me anyway!)