Eye On The Birdie – Post #29 Birthdays

Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the 29th installment of Eye On The Birdie! Since I am a Bad Girl, I still have not gone golfing since the last time I went golfing… which would be about a month and a half ago. But don’t worry! My parents have devised a plan to desert me at Civitan every Friday after school. Except last Friday, of course. Last Friday was my brother’s birthday. You know him as Eagle. I know him as ____________. Let’s commence! To begin, you need to understand that in my family, birthdays are a tremendous deal. We don’t have birthday parties, we don’t go out of town, and we don’t have extended family over. Still, birthdays are as important as Christmas. A birthday is the one day that the birthday boy or girl gets to do whatever they want. (Within reason, that is. If you decide you want to eat nothing but cake and go skydiving, you will be sorely disappointed.) My brother, being more sensible than me (every year for about seven years, I wanted to go tubing at Hesperus, but it was quite difficult to go tubing all day, open presents all day, and eat junk food all day) chose to have a rather low-key day. We got up, ate, and opened presents. We have a very special tradition for opening presents. Before you open the presents, you have to find them! This year, all his presents were left in the living room, but then he was hustled away and shut in a room while one of his presents was hidden with an extremely annoying toy that beeps at any noise in the vicinity. Then my brother was released to wander the house screaming the toy’s name (“Chubbles!”) and listening for beeps. This repeated five times, and then he decided to just open the rest of his gifts before Chubbles could abscond with them. Since most of Eagle’s gifts were Lego sets and books, he and Fore began building and Driver and I slunk off to a quiet corner with as many books as we could carry. After everyone was ready to refuel with some sugar, my parents prepared his birthday treat. It didn’t take long. They just put a small gift on a platter (another of our traditions is to include a gift on or in the treat) and then poured a bag of marshmallows on top of it. You see, we don’t do traditional birthday cakes, either. The birthday boy or girl gets to choose any treat they want. I almost always choose ice cream in some form, although once I chose pie and once I chose jellybeans. Ice cream is better. Anyway, Eagle chose a pile of marshmallows and a vat of hot chocolate. I had very little hot chocolate. Instead, I rustled up some tea candles and roasted mini marshmallows over them for half the afternoon. Then we watched a movie. Then we went to a restaurant called Wonderful Buffet for dinner. It is a wonderful buffet, but it is an Asian buffet. I am not a fan of Asian food. However, they have soft-serve ice cream, so everything was fine. Also, they have good French fries. I am mildly embarrassed by the fact that I had French fries and ice cream at a place that serves mainly Asian food. When we went home, we watched an episode of this show from the 1980s called “Due South.” It’s really quite good. My parents have it on DVD. And then we went to bed. I like going to bed. It is much warmer and softer than places other than bed. And that brings us to a conclusion. I plan to write more soon. I have multiple posts pending. Both of them have more to do with golf than this one, but I felt like talking about my incredibly odd family. So stay tuned, because I might get around to writing about learning styles and card games within the next month! -Birdie