Cockroaches and Wheelies

I just wanna veg: munchupons, pants undone, slovenly-looking hair, guzzle a beer and relax.

Ok, so that doesn’t sound entirely attractive, but all I feel like doing is nothing. After a long day of trying to keep quiet and keep Sacha relatively quiet (an arduous task as he is Mr Chatterbox’s best friend, Chatteryourearsoff) while Tony is working graveyard shifts, and pushing Sacha around on his car, I am wiped. The car is intended to be used as a walker AND as a riding toy-car, but since he is not strong enough to walk with it, I am now a slave to the car and the pushing of it. And La Cucaracha (that means cockroach, right? Who would write such a catchy song about cockroaches, anyway?). Everytime he turns the steering wheel, it plays La Cucaracha. And Sacha knows this. And he can make it happen at will. Almost telekinetically. He just has to think to himself “turn left!” and it shall be done. And then I am forever stuck with that demon of a little tune in my head.

Does anyone know the real lyrics to that song? Or where I can get four gross of Bengay to rub on my back?

Raffi is cool because...

I forgot. I wanted to mention that I found a Raffi CD at (gasp) Walmart! I didn’t recognize the album cover, but as soon as I put the gem music into the jukebox, I full-on sang every song. That’s right, I sang along with Raffi. And Sacha thought it was great. Tony thought I was insane. But I ask you this: who DOESN’T know Raffi? Everyone knows the Brush Your Teeth song, even if they don’t realize it’s Raffi. A bit obsessive compulsive with the brushing, yes. But good for kids with bad breath? YES!

Make fun of me if you will, but as a Beluga Grad, I am rediscovering a love of the children’s troubadour, and I think if you all dig deep into your record and tape collections from your youth, you will fall in love again, too.

How on earth did I get to be 25?

I am now 25. Generally, birthday tradition dictates that I should be hung over with my head in the toilet from the despair that I am now older than I want to be. How on earth did I ever get to be 25? I remember clearly on my 13th birthday thinking that it was horrible to leave age 12 forever. I love being 12, I thought. Things will never be this great.
Disclaimer: My head was not in the toilet on my 13th birthday.

Every year proves to be the same. I love being 15! Oh wait, now that I am 16 I love that I can get my license. I love being 17 because drinking illegally is so much fun and totally bad-ass! Wait, being 18 rocks because I can go to the bar and have the guys flailing themselves at me and writing their phone numbers on my arm without anyone there to stop me! (Why this never happened before I turned 18, I’ll never know. It wasn’t like people didn’t know who I was. But I think my smart-reputation made guys afraid to talk to me unless they’d tied a few on. Pathetic species, they are).

Now, I am 25. And did how did I spend my day?

First of all, Sacha awoke only once in the night (after his little nightmare incident) and Tony took him in the morning so that I could sleep. Well, that was his intent. It is rather difficult to sleep in when Sacha is in bed next to me whining because he wants to get up, but Tony was just not ready to start his day. So after push and shove, my boys exited the bed and left me to my slumber.
Or rather, Sacha had one of the most whiny mornings ever. He didn’t want to eat for Daddy, he didn’t want to play. he just wanted to groan and whine because Mommy was in bed. So did I actually get to sleep? Not so much. But brownie points go out for effort.

I awoke at 9:00 so that I could put my grumpy son down for a nap, as he will NOT let Daddy put him down. We napped for an hour, awoke and realized that Tony was nowhere to be found and the car was gone. DId I mention that he had not given me a card, nor wrapped my gift? But I digress. I took a few phone calls from family and friends wishing me a happy birthday (with one friend recording a happy birthday song for me and playing it over and over over the phone singing things like “you’re old, I can hear your joints cracking...” He’ll be 25 soon enough) and saw Tony drive up with s grocery bag and some T-Ho’s. He needed eggs to bake my cake, he said. Too bad he didn’t wait until I woke up, since I had a whole LIST of things I needed to buy at the store. But I guess I’ll have to get to that later.

Tony began the baking of the cake. The batter mixing turned out dandy. When he went to put the batter in the springform pan, he noticed that the recipe said to line the pan. We had nothing to line it with, so I told him to go to our neighbour’s and borrow some wax paper. He said that he could do without. So he poured the batter in, and the batter started leaking right on out. He paced frantically around the kitchen and dug out 2 round cake tins and poured the batter in those (after greasing and flouring them, of course). Finally, the cake was in the oven.

Once it was done, he took the cakes out and let them cool. Then, he needed to remove them from the pan. Since they had been greased and floured, they should have been easily extricated from the pans. Well, after using a knife and a spatula and a pancake flipper, one cake was in a few pieces on the counter. The other cake was in shambles as I had tried to shake it loose from the pan, but only part of the cake wanted to shake its ass out of there.
It’s ok, I said. You can use the frosting to make it stick together.

On to the frosting. It tasted great, but when it went to assembling the layers of cake, the frosting spreader just caught on the cake, causing itself to implode and collapse, much in the manner of the Hatch on Lost:



Those little white blobs on the cake? Those are little bees made out of marzipan with almond wings. Unfortunately, Tony didn’t think to put the wings on until the bees were on the imploding self-destructing cake. So as he pushed those wings into the bees, the bees pushed into the cake and the whole ass-end of the cake collapsed into itself.

All this time, Sacha and I had been galavanting about the town, giving Tony some time to resurrect his cake. We went to the grocery store, the library, the evil Wal-Mart, and the mall. I came back and saw the “cake”.

Tony looked ready to cry. I’m sure it will taste good, I said. He put it in the fridge in the hope that it would solidify itself together and remain moderately cake-like in appearance until we were ready to eat it. Did I mention that we had company coming over?

Our company arrived and supper was not even in the prep stage. We were just having tacos, but not a thing was sliced, grated or sautéed. Since I had been entertaining Sacha for most of the day, I really wanted to free my arms. I’ll cook supper, I said. Julie (our friend) said “cooking on your birthday?” But you gotta do what you gotta do.

We put Sacha to bed and then took out the cake. It had managed to stay somewhat firm enough to place candles in. So there I was, placing 25 candles in my own cake (which Julie also laughed about) and lighting them myself. They whisper-sang the good old happy birthday song, and I blew out the candles. The cake was delicious to the mouth, but only so-so to the eyes.

We then indulged in a game of Settlers of Catan (Cities and Knights expansion) which I hadn’t played since before Sacha was born. Ah, how I missed that game! And since Julie’s tummy warns against drinking alcohol, I christened my new champagne flutes with some sparkling grape juice.

We then changed all our clocks for daylight savings (why this early??) and hit the sack at about 1:00 am. And for my birthday, Tony said that he would NOT ask me for sex. Fantastic, I thought. Just brilliant.

It seems like a bit of a drag birthday, but it was one of the best I’ve had. Sure, I didn’t get one of Joan’s black forest cakes (Nampa people you know what I mean), and I wasn’t partying hard in a bar getting relentlessly hit on by guys. But it was the first birthday I spent with my son. And that was the best thing. Makes me not even sorry I turned 25, because he wasn’t here yet at any other age.

And besides, doesn’t car insurance go down at 25?

And by the way, Happy Birthday also to Osama bin Laden.