Birthday

I don't even know where to begin with my birthday. I expected it to be kind of a sad occasion, but more out of sentimentality...it ended up just being a disappointing kind of sad. It started out so promising...

The day before, we went out for dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory. My go-to dish here is always the Mizithra Cheese & Browned Butter Pasta. Francisco got the Spinach & Cheese Ravioli, and I kind of liked his better, so we ended up sharing. The entrees come with salad, bread and butter, and ice cream, so you will definitely get a full meal.

Francisco had spoiled my surprise the weekend before, so I knew my mom and brother were planning on coming down on my birthday. When I got home from work, I found that my brother had hung up balloons for me.

Francisco had picked up a box of my favorite cupcakes from Abby Girl Sweets.

My mom wanted to treat me to dinner, so we figured a safe bet would be Tom+Chee. Her and I each got the Grilled Mac + Chee Sandwich [she'd liked it so much the first time she got it, she tried replicating it at home! I hear it didn't turn out so well.] Of course, I couldn't pass up a Grilled Cheese Donut [even with all those cupcakes back at home], so I had the Bananarama with caramelized banana and smoked gouda.

I still had to work on Friday, but I just went in for a half-day.  It was now my brother's turn to take me out for my birthday dinner, so he took me to Yardhouse.

Full and slightly tipsy after three birthday cocktails, we headed over to Eden Park to walk off some of our meal.

Here's our silly group photo.

We also stopped at Mt. Airy to do a bit of swinging because of course we're all big kids.

On Saturday morning, I sat down for a heart-to-heart with my brother, which frustratingly seemed to be much more of a heart-to-ears. We probably sat on the floor in my bedroom for close to an hour, while I opened with "so, I'm probably going to cry..." then promptly burst into tears "but that's just who I am". To his credit, he sat there seemingly patiently and let me talk. But I suppose I was hoping for more of a conversation and not just a dumping of my emotions. Either way, I suppose a felt a little less sad just getting everything out, but my brother is not comfortable with dealing with emotions, and if anything, he seemed to get even more distant for the remainder of the weekend. This coming weekend is his last in the Midwest before he moves to Washington, and I still just can't even process it. Ugh.

After everyone was ready, there was a tense discussion on where we should go for lunch. This is a common source of contention for everyone, but this conversation was just going even more abysmally bad than usual. I finally just suggested we go to the grocery store and pick up stuff for spaghetti. So, that's what we did.

My day got a little brighter after lunch when Francisco put together a mojito bar for everyone. We had fresh juiced lime, blackberries, strawberries, and watermelon juice along with fresh blueberries, oranges, cilantro, and mint. We were originally planning on a margarita bar, but I ended up getting a bottle of Bacardi from my brother, so we figured we would use our abundance of rum.

My saving grace was my friend and neighbor Linda stopping by for a couple of drinks and a little bit of time spent playing a game.  I hope I get to see more of her this summer!

Somehow, we even got Linda to join in for a couple of rounds of Just Dance, lol.

On Sunday morning, we headed over to French Fry Heaven - I had these Parmesan Garlic fries covered with a fairly generous sprinkling of cheese curds. At this point, I was having to take several deep breaths as my brother complained that "we should've just went to McDonald's". We went home and were discussing what board game we should play and where, but he deemed the deck too dirty and said he hated playing games out there.

As much as I value family time, it was probably best that they left a day earlier than planned - before emotions got even more strained. I could hardly even process where things went wrong with the weekend. To make matters worse, on Monday morning, I bent over to reach for Colby, and I managed to throw my back out. I spent the rest of the day with an ice pack or heating pad and have been in pain all week.

LOL, what a lovely birthday weekend, huh? My husband has promised to make it up to me, so we'll see if there's any salvaging this year.