Michael: "My mother hired a pony.. I got a really bad rash. I never came outside. So that was my worst birthday."

Wow, thanks for all the super nice bday wishes and gifts! Well, I had high hopes, but it wasn't the best day. No, on this particular August 27th I woke up to find all three boys in this household had come down with the flu. Lovely. Still, I look forward to this day every year, and despite all the snot, demands and crying, I still felt happy. It was my birthday.

One good thing was going to O.G.'s for lunch. We had waffles, fried chicken, O.G.'s famous flank steak, and our annual mint chip ice cream cake. I say "our" because it was a shared cake, seeing as how my brother and I are 4 years apart, but our birthDAYS are two days apart. We have shared a cake/party for 29 years. So I took the liberty of scraping his name off the cake, so I could feel special for just one day. Ha.


As I sat there at the end of the day, the husband in a flu coma in bed, the Kid crying his eyes out over his runny nose, the Baby with smashed tofu in his hair, I polished off the last of the ice cream cake and sighed. It wasn't a perfect day, but I was happy nonetheless. Only 364 days til the next one.