50th – not a funny story though I try….
Yep, it was just my 50th…. I have to say it was a lot more disappointing than I expected. I actually love birthdays. I try to plan them out for the boys…. Once for my husbands 40th I invited people for a surprise (even my grandmother was there!) and then had a cake with 40 candles. What I did find was 40 candles creates a small fire warm enough to catch about anything on fire. A friend also snuck into his department office another year and hung a what happened the year you were born on the wall – no name, just the year.
My husband is great and has done things, I just thought there would be something special for my 50th. Instead, due to everything going wrong, there wasn’t even a cake or a Happy Birthday song. My family doesn’t even realize they forgot it all. The day before we went to a restaurant I chose for a Birthday/Christmas family dinner – yep birthday by a holiday really sucks your whole life. The place was packed and took forever, it also took forever to get there due to my mother’s door lock breaking that day. My birthday was mentioned as the check came and the server did say Happy Birthday. Having a family that doesn’t care about birthdays they don’t realize that I’m the only one that’s never gotten the free birthday dessert, the restaurant singing happy birthday to me because I don’t feel I should be the one to tell myself.
For my birthday I had it planned to go eat at Indy and see the Children’s museum , but the lock was still broke… So by the time we left and they gave up on the lock it was late. We arrived at the museum having not had lunch, 2 hours before the museum closed and right after their food court closed. We ran through as fast as we could…. and then had a late lunch/dinner at a cracker barrel as fast as we could on the way home, arriving late at home.
The next day I did run out to get and eat a free cupcake from Gigi’s while my husband was on lunch break. My family had already told me they didn’t want any so I ate it in the car before coming home….
Having a birthday at a holiday is pretty disappointing, every year growing up the school would plan the school program on my birthday, friends would be busy with their family, family my family hadn’t seen all year would be coming into town – and it always seemed that they would arrive on my birthday… with my mother saying isn’t it nice they are here for your school program, birthday whatever…. Nope, I just wanted one year that it was a day I wasn’t told that people had to rush off because so and so were coming, or were tired or whatever because they just arrived. And the whole here’s your birthday/Christmas gift. What they are really saying is, this time of year is busy and expensive and so we can cut corners on you, so we did…. We couldn’t even splurge for birthday paper. I didn’t even realize you could get birthday wrapping paper until I had my own kids.
Yep, right now I’m a little sad, and it’s not that I’m 50… I actually do feel like I’ve done a lot …. I’m a farmer’s daughter that got a Master’s degree and worked through school as a computer programmer! I’ve been certified in GIS (map making) and Floodplain management. I have my name on a lot of published papers….. I’ve coordinated both a state robotics championship (FLL) and an international conference (Environmental Informatics). Now I have a business that isn’t doing horribly and to top it all off I have a great husband and three amazing boys.