Monday Ops.

Today had the following elements that had to be planned and carried out with surgical precision:

• birthday breakfast for running/former-missionary/college son (happy birthday!)
• arrival at office when I said I'd be there
• numerous items on the long, long list of shit I had to do
• leaving my office on time so that I could make a luncheon appointment
• leaving my luncheon appointment so that I could shop for two baby gifts for the two (2) new grandchildren who have recently arrived in our family (hooray for babies!)
• expert shopping, so that I could arrive home by 3, so that
• running/former-missionary/college son could take my car to his first interim class meeting at 3:30 p.m.
• packaging up the baby gifts so we could go visit the babies
• visiting the babies, one at home, one at the hospital
• arriving home in time to watch The Closer.

In an example of the crack timing I executed today, let me say that I shopped like a ninja. I was in and out of that Target with two baby jammies and two baby blankets, two festive gift bags, coordinating tissue paper, and a copy of In Style, like it was my job. My ninja job.

In a break from the ninja work, we held two beautiful tiny babies. One of the babies was at home, with her sisters milling around and talking about the Christmas tree (Us: What do you want for Christmas? One of the baby's sisters: I forgot. Us: How about an orange? Sister: . . . or a banana? Us: how about both? Sister: [shrug]); the other, brand new, was still with his mother at the hospital, where it was quiet, even hushed.

Holding a baby is the opposite of ninja work. Holding a baby is the antidote for the suspicion that you might be rushing around just a little too much.

You say it's your birthday.

Fact:  every birthday of every one of my children occurs in December or January.  

Fact:  my mother's birthday is in January.

Fact:  the historian's birthday is . . . in January.

Fact:  my son-in-law's birthday is also in January.

Fact:  my son the soccer coach, who joined our family kind of midstream--his birthday is in February.

There was a time in my life when I didn't go for more than a few days without baking a cake. Today I bought a bunch of birthday candles, just in case.  One time, I asked my doctor about what might explain so many births clustered so tightly.  "I guess you all liked to have sex in April," she said.  Oh: that.

[via PinkCakeBox]

Anyway:  happy birthdays to running son (20), college daughter (22), my daughter the makeup artist (26), and singing son (28), whose birthdays have already taken place.  Happy birthday to my mom (ageless!), whose birthday is right around the corner.  Happy birthday to my daughter in Scotland, who will be 30 very soon.  Each of them is so splendid a person, there should be fireworks, parades, confetti, and all sorts of delights to round out the celebration. (Also, the fact that I will soon have a thirty-year old daughter--I'm not quite sure what this signifies, but I fear it may mean I am old.)  

I have baked nary a birthday cake this year.  Everyone's grown up, plans are more malleable, people live out of town, etc.  And I'm sure I don't technically need birthday cake, but it does seem kind of a shame.  The historian's birthday, upcoming, may call for an extravagant cake.  I do have the candles.