Birthday Disasters Monday Morning Check-In Post

How Are You??

“What do you want to do for your birthday?” asked my friend while she and I were sipping tea together at The Farmer and the Cook the week before it.

I made a face, “Nothing. I don’t usually make a big deal about it other than getting a massage and having a meal at my favorite Japanese restaurant.” I almost always have sushi as a birthday treat.

“Great! Let’s do that!” meaning have a meal together.

“Well, I think I want to do that just with Jon,” I said.

I was observing myself I as was saying this, noticing my control/trust issues coming up. It’s been a long time since I have invited anyone other than Jon into my birthday.

“Come on, we have to do something,” she said. “I know! My friend is having a dance party for her birthday which is February 1st. I’ll ask her if we can make it for yours as well."

My friend’s partner’s birthday was February 3rd, and the Feb 1, 2, 3 birthday lineup sounded fun to me, low pressure since it would be a multibirthday event. Plus dancing.

“Okay,” I nodded, and the plan was set. The party ended up happening on the night of my birthday.

I have a long history of wrecked birthdays, and I think I am not unusual in this. The first disaster I can recall, other than being born at the tail end of the biggest blizzard ever to hit Chicago, occurred at a pizza restaurant on my 8th. I took my first bite out of my first slice of piping hot pizza, and the entire top layer of cheese came off with it and fell on my bottom lip, burning it. Crying in the bathroom while my mom put cold water on my lip, the pain did not go away for a couple of days.

It would just get weirder and worse as the years went on, due to divorce and abuse and February 2nd often being the coldest day of the year. The worst official adult birthday party I had was when I turned 29. It was at a bar in Chicago and we ordered sushi to be delivered, the temperature was -13° with a windchill much lower than that. No one came other than my partner at the time and the sushi did not make it either.

The last time I drank alcohol with my mother was on my 32nd birthday. She was excited to order sake, and I drank some with her because I did not want her to have to drink alone. On my birthday.

When I met Jon, just a month or so after that last birthday mentioned, I was fine with no parties and just him, and this is pretty much how it’s been since.

So, it was with some nervousness along with some excitement that I headed into the day of my birth this year, preparing to attend a party filled with people I would mostly not know. I had decided to make a vegan spinach artichoke dip and crostinis to go along with it and spent a couple of hours on it, having fun while making it. I cooked it in a glass pie dish and covered it with foil.

Jon and I got dressed, he wore one of my colorful jumpsuits to go along with the theme of the party, and we headed out the door, dip and crostini in hand. I set the dip on the hood of the car and went to the back door to open it, I turned and Jon had the dip in his hands. I almost said, “Put it back on the hood and I’ll take it,” I had seen it smashed on the ground earlier and had dismissed the vision as anxiety, but alas, I did not do as I felt I should and instead took the pie dish covered in foil from his hands.

You know what happened next, right? Aluminum foil has a mind of its own. I tried to prevent it as I felt the foil slip beneath my fingers and failed. The driveway was suddenly covered in dip and broken glass. This also meant we were now going to be late, which is something I hate!

Jon went into fix-it mode as we cleaned it up together and I tried not to feel bad/cry or start a fight. I mean, this was ripe for a fight, this moment, and neither of us took the bait. It took a herculean effort on my part to keep my mouth shut and not blame him. He also applied tremendous will in not saying, “How could this have happened?”

When we were very new, like a few months in, we were at a Blockbuster Video one night. Damn, I am dating us. As we looked for something to watch we overheard the conversation happening at the register between the older married couple there and the employee.

“You owe (some ridiculous amount of money) in late fees,” said the employee.

The husband turned to his wife and said loudly and in an accusatory tone, “How could this have happened?” as if it were her fault and her fault alone that they were in this predicament.

I turned to Jon and said, “You know, if you ever say that to me, you can expect I will not respond well.” As I said, we were very new and very much in the in-love stage of our relationship, so it seemed like we could never find ourselves in the place that couple was that night.

We certainly have since. You can not survive a twenty-five-year relationship without some fighting and even a few epic battles.

Every once in a while, one of us will say, “How could this have happened?!’ in jest, usually amid an actual fight to break the tension.

So, we headed to the party and I tried not to care about my broken dip or the fact that I had spent a couple of hours on it on my birthday just to wreck it.

In Brian Froud’s and Jessica Macbeth’s “The Faeries’ Oracle” (my favorite faerie divination tool), there are a few cards devoted to the Faery Challengers. This seemed to be the work of Ffaff The Ffooter and a message to us both about grounding. Jon and I, both with Sun in Aquarius, Moon in Scorpio, and Leo Rising often struggle with the earthly aspects of being here.

Dancing with our shoes thrown to the side of the room an hour later was just the remedy we needed. I did have fun at the party, so much fun, and danced as I have not danced in years with my friends, the birthday girl host, and the next day birthday boy as well. It had high school drama club basement party vibes in the best of ways with a DJ who strung together an incredible and joyful mix of tunes.

As our friends were leaving they spontaneously invited us for a birthday pancake brunch the next day, and it was a wonderful time, extending the birthday love further.

Yesterday it rained and rained and rained. Much of CA is an actual disaster right now which puts into perspective that my birthday mishaps have been just that, mishaps, and not disasters. The rain has washed away any last vestiges of the dip. I made another batch and Jon and I enjoyed it while the rain came down.

How are you?