An Uneventful Birthday

Thursday, 29 November 2007

My friend's husband Lyon commented on how he remembers going to big birthday celebrations for me in years' past, yet this year seems to be a low-key one for me. And, that it is. And that's fine by me.

32 years ago, I was born into this world. It was a Saturday night, and my parents, devout UH football fans, were about to miss the UH vs. San Jose State football game because of me. I was born right before kickoff, at 6:46 pm.

This year has been such a whirlwind one that I no longer need huge birthday celebrations. The only huge party I look forward to having is for Chase.

Besides, I was too stressed out today finishing the final details of my reports for my ELL Program and preparing for our upcoming trip that I almost forgot it was my birthday.

The morning started off with a termite inspector doing a free evaluation of our house, and then after meeting Maila and Lyon and 1 year-old Sacha for dim sum, I headed straight to school to finish copying and assembling the folders for next week's audit. The secretary helped hold Chase while I got things together. I finished by 5 pm, then walked out the door, only to realize that I left Chase's favorite tuby toy in the office! Yikes! I cannot leave Hawai'i without that toy! The librarian let me in, only to make the alarm go off. So, we had to call the custodian to come and turn it off and reset the alarm.

Call it a comedy of errors.

I rushed off to get Chase bathed and ready for dinner. Chris came home from work and we met the Halsalls. Today is also Ron's birthday (my father-in-law), so we were in for a surprise dinner. We enjoyed an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Pacific Beach Hotel. Funny thing is, my friends Leinora and Ron, whom we had dined with the night before, were also there. The highlight of the night was watching the fish and sting rays in the huge aquarium in the middle of the restaurant. A scuba diver would swim around with the fish and rays. He would hold up "Happy Birthday" signs in front of your table (though Audrey, my mother-in-law, didn't know about that extra part, so we didn't have that for our table). Chase's vision isn't quite so global yet, so he was more interested in the plants and the people than the huge aquarium.

We went back to the Halsalls for dessert, the traditional blowing of the magic candles (you know, those ones that never go out!)on the cake, and then opening of presents.

We got home close to 11:30 pm, and although I was exhausted from the day's events, I still had to pack and clean out the fridge. I knew it would be a LONG night!