Poor Planning is my Wheelhouse

In a staggering display of poor planning, there are three birthdays in two days in my house. RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS. You can imagine what kind of wild and panicked running around this would entail.

The life of a single mother of four kids who runs her own business is a bit insane at the best of times, so let’s throw in three birthdays, the busy season at work and Christmas just to make things interesting! YOLO, BITCHES!

Now, one of these birthdays is mine. Which basically means I haven’t been able to celebrate my own birthday in like, 15 years. Because the 10th of December is not about me any longer and hasn’t been for a while. Which is totally fine now that I’m on the back side of 40 and I’m more about ignoring my advanced age than celebrating it. Frankly, I’m more excited about International Beer Day.

Birthday week, or Hell week as I like to call it, requires advanced logistical skills to pull off, especially this year. To ensure the happiness of all being fêted, we had to arrange natal day festivities around 734 basketball games, two music recitals, several practices and a family crisis. If I am not qualified to run a small country after that, I don’t know what prerequisites that job requires. Maybe my Excel skills aren’t up to date, but WHATEVER.

Hell Week also requires an iron stomach and a swift metabolism – as you are expected to eat literally MOUNDS of birthday cake. My grandmother always told me it was rude to refuse both birthday and wedding cake – so who am I to break the rules?

The next requirement of this time of year is a money tree. Especially now that the kids are older and are thinking that maybe those $275 basketball shoes are a reasonable birthday gift. And because I grew up with a December birthday and have an undying hatred of the dreaded “COMBO GIFT”, I would never do that to my offspring. So I still have to be the Birthday Fairy AND Santa Claus! All in the same three week period!

The third requirement of Birthday Festivus is to cook like you are a commercial kitchen. Tacos! Lasagna! Pancakes! French Toast! The culinary requirements are endless, specific and need to be produced in mass quantity.

As the curtain falls on this year’s celebrations, I sit on my couch with a well earned glass of red – and the good stuff, too. Even the teenager is in bed and I enjoy the quiet, the wine and the fire in the wood stove. I think back on the days when things weren’t so wild. When the early part of December was all about me. And I think, despite the insanity of the month, that things are preferable this way. I like being needed. I like making it all happen. I love it when it all comes together – and for that one glorious moment I am “the best mom ever”. Call me sadistic – but I think given the choice I would still have it all the same way. But Thank the Lord it only happens once a year. There’s only so much French Toast making one mom can handle.