Birthday wishes.

Summer is birthday season at In My Head.

The husband’s birthday is in June (notably, in the same week as Father’s Day), the girl’s is in July, the boy’s is in August, and mine falls on the very first day of Autumn (September 21). Scattered in between are: My brother-in-law’s, my sister’s, my sister-in-law’s, my brother’s. And several friends.

By the time my birthday rolls around at fall’s first blush, I’m honestly a bit sick of cake (wait — perish the thought! No, not really. Never! I’m just sick of making it), and am fresh out of any celebratory oomph. Should someone plan an event for me, I would happily attend, but if I have to do anything other than say “yes, please”? I don’t have it in me.

But I do spend the summer thinking about birthday wishes. Mostly, I’ll be honest, my children’s. The husband is difficult to shop for and though I almost always manage some hat-trick in the eleventh hour, there is very rarely a Thing with which I can thrill his birthday socks off. The year I gave him a gift certificate to Game Stop might have been the best, I think, just because it was code for: Go ahead. Play video games!

Thinking about the kids’ presents, though, is fun, and I have a few awesome ideas in store this year. I always festoon the house with balloons and signs and crepe paper (this last task has latterly been taken over by the husband, and I must herein express my deep gratitude for same) and I lovelovelove that they are building up these memories of waking up to such a scene on their birthdays, a scene that positively drips with our wild, crazy love for them both.

But me? What about me? We all know that I have already gotten my present (thanks, me!) and that I love it. So the field is wide open for idle wishing. If I had all the time and money?

1. I would totally fly to New York to see American Idiot on Broadway. I’ve written about this before so I won’t go into it much, but yesterday, zooming around the curves of Lake Shore Drive with the original CD blaring in my ears, I began to formulate an elaborate plan by which I would do just that — and then realized that arranging such an event for me and my date would like cost somewhere in the vicinity of $800, all told. So, you know, not likely.
2. I would, also, totally go to the Steinbeck Festival. Again, written about here.
3. I would get the house painted. (Or, the masonry fixed and painted. Or whatever the hell it is that my house needs done to it that I don’t understand but can see with my own two eyes as it peels rapidly before me). No really! Having that off my list, and having the house I love so much looking all spiffy and pretty? That would make me very happy indeed, on my birthday.
4. I’d get a flat-screen TV. If you saw my living room, you’d see that this would hardly even be considered an indulgence, but is rather nearly a requirement of the space.
5. I’d buy tickets to every single show I want to go to for an entire year — all of them. Every concert, every band, big, small, expensive, cheap, all of them — and I’d hire someone else to find the babysitter. And some of the shows would be in Europe.
6. I would hire a personal shopper and give him or her a bottomless budget. I am far more of a clothes-horse than I generally let on, leaning toward a kind of a butch-dandy look broken up intermittently with the occasional pretty skirt/frock, and yet I don’t really feel like I know how to shop for myself all that well. Or where, I suppose. Ah, the luxury of being led around by the hand and arriving home with just the right outfits!
7. This dress:
   

   Image by Yuri Gripas / AP Photos (h/t Mrs-O.org)

   (Which, I must say: Though this dress would be lovely on me, it would not be nearly as lovely on me as it is on FLOTUS…. I swoon! ) 

8. These Doc Martens (yes, still).
   
   (See? Butch-dandy!)

   Update (July 17): Fuck it. I bought the boots. The delightful Donna sent me a link to a sale at Zappos, and I caved like a very ill-built house of cards. Thank you, Delightful Donna!

Posted by emilylhauser on July 16, 2010

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/birthday-wishes/