One Birthday Sunday. Or is that Sundae?

It’s my frickin’ birthday! (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

My train was delayed getting out of the city last night. The rule is that if your train is delayed, you get Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream so I don’t really mind too much when it happens. What? Of course that’s a rule I made up, what are you, new?

I got home after midnight so it was technically my birthday. Add to that the incomprehensible segue to Daylight Saving time and it was like my birthday was running in hyper-drive to meet me!

I had this lovely assortment of cards to open when I got home:

I took Misty’s Laws advice to heart and made sure I had lots of water with me at the Bikram class #1 took me to at 0-dark-thirty this morning.

The kids sang me a truly horrible rendition of Happy Birthday that the puggles joined in. One of these days I’m gonna get that on tape. Or else one of these days the cops are going to come back and give us a ticket instead of just a warning.

Then we had cake for breakfast.

Did you know you can get a bunch of free crap on your birthday just because it’s your birthday if you sign up with everybody’s rewards programs? I totally milked that. Perfume, mascara, and chocolate- what more could a girl want?

The kids cleaned the house up. I was thrilled to also get a $5 starbucks gift card that #4 bought with her own money, and a beautiful blue scarf that #5 knit all by himself in Knitting Club (which pretty much every kid in the 5th grade belongs to, including the boys. I love his teacher).

I even made a new vegetarian black bean chili recipe that I halfway made up and everybody ate it. WOW!

I love birthdays. I wrote this post last year about the things that rock about turning 40, and it all still holds true.

So keeping in the spirit of everything being all about MEEEEEE today, here are MY links.

My favorite, laugh-out-loud picture of little boys doing dishes: No Shirt? No Shoes? No Pants? No Problem! on Nurking Moms.

Howling. This is awesome. Also, people, this is why you should register ALL your domain names. EARLY. Guy Fieri didn’t quite get that done and now there’s guysamericankitchenandbar.com

This one I’m putting in because I loved it and I know it will make my mom cry: Boomer Grandparenting: Able to Leap Tall Continents in a Single Bound

Here’s another one that cracked me up: a little fabulous cartoon about a wedding entrance fail on Happy or Hungry.

Last today is an organization dedicated to helping struggling volunteer fire companies raise money to carry out their services. Via Beer. From a vintage fire truck named Betty Lou. 77Rescue.org

Happy Sunday.

#5 Learns Why He Shouldn’t Open Other People’s Mail

Because we work nights, we usually get home after the kids go to sleep. They leave us notes: tests that need to be signed, permission slips, requests for money, and random thoughts are all written out and laid on the dining room table.

Also, anything that arrives in our absence and is addressed “to the parents of…” is immediately opened, read, and taped shut again. Or hidden in their bedroom in a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable, since our schools always send an email alert saying what we should have received.

This is what we came home to last night:

Sometimes it’s better not to know, isn’t it? At least he didn’t hide the letter.

I usually don’t snoop because it always ends in regret. One year my sister found our Christmas presents and showed them to me. I felt so guilty about it. Christmas morning came and I felt like I had betrayed my parents as I kept saying “Just what I always wanted!” after I opened each non-surprise. Since I can’t remember if we ever actually told this story to our parents or not, this seems like a good place to end this post.

Did you ever find anything that made you regret snooping?

Remember to enter the Pi Day Pie Challenge! Deadline is end of the day March 13th.

One Slurpee Shoe Sunday

#4: You remember that day about a year and a half ago when I was riding on Julietta’s scooter and I wrecked and hurt my finger real bad and I haven’t wanted to go on a scooter or a skateboard ever since?

Me: You mean right before we bought you the skateboard for your birthday that you’d been asking for for three years and now have never ridden? No, I don’t remember that.

#4: Well, that day I had a Slurpee and I dropped it.

Me: While you were riding on the scooter you were drinking a Slurpee? Maybe this is connected to you wrecking.

#4: No, I was drinking it next to the scooter. I just dropped it you know?

Me: Mmm-hmmm.

#4: And when it landed it just landed exactly like this, I didn’t do anything to it, so I took a picture and put it on my phone for the background:

#4: It almost made up for not getting to drink my Slurpee.

Here are your links:

It’s Shamrock Shake time again, at a certain fast food establishment I don’t patronize and haven’t in years. Here’s a badasss homemade Shamrock Shake recipe (bonus: contains actual dairy ingredients, so you can legally refer to it as a milkshake, rather than just a shake. . .gads, I totally sound like a former McEmployee. Which I am.) Shamrock Shake on Homesteading Housewife

If you’ve ever been pregnant, or if you’ve ever made somebody pregnant, or if you’ve never wanted to be pregnant, you should check out this post by Lyz Lenz, who is freaking hilarious and whom I got to hear speak at BlogHer ’12 : I Am Not a Magical Birthing Unicorn

Dammit. Somebody posted this on Facebook and I watched it on my lunch break at work and had to pretend like I got hot sauce in my eye again. Viddler video: high school basketball player passes the ball to a mentally challenged player on the other team.

I have a confession to make: I’m real damn glad I missed out on toddler tantrums. If any of you are taking my name in vain right now, please know that I am exactly 30 days away from having four teenage girls living under my roof at one time. For a bit of insight to the science behind why your animal child (um, speaking only of toddlers here) just threw spaghetti in your face, check out this post: Why Does My Kid Freak Out? on Slate. If you have a teen who just threw spaghetti at you, I can’t help you.

I freaking love this: The Nietzsche Family Circus. Randomized pairing of Family Circus cartoons and Nietzsche quotes.

One last bonus link for a bonus mom. Lisa Teal-Webb is a stepmom in Ohio who is one of my biggest sources of step-parenting help and inspiration through her group Buckeye Bonus Mom. This link is to an interview NBC4 in Ohio did with her.

Happy Sunday.