The word celebrate is up for interpretation, right?

We celebrated Allan's birthday this weekend. For me, "celebrating" meant sifting through my closet for something decent to wear to the funeral service of a neighbor. Sitting amongst all the LIVING neighbors at a meeting wherein I was reluctantly voted president of the condo association. Helping two overworked, underpaid children clean out a dark and cluttered garage simultaneously reeking of dead stink bugs and roadkill. And bandaging up a scraped knee that hurt TWENTY TIMES worse than it looked. It meant emptying out seven or eight boxes of important STUFF in search of something important. Cursing my long list of important stuff. Driving to the public library to return a stack of overdue books we found while getting rid of lots of important stuff. And contemplating having my house professionally fumigated to kill all the ghosts Toni thinks we potentially liberated in the cleaning process.

For Allan, "celebrating" meant surprising children with a trip to Dairy Queen. Treating himself to a chocolate sundae. Braving a trip to the mall with said children. And helping me look for the dratted important stuff. It meant calling me MRS. President while enduring the title of First Man. Convincing Emma that lima beans really ARE food. And that boogies really AREN'T. It meant changing ten or twelve POUNDS of dirty diapers. Cursing the summer heat. Watching five or six episodes of Go Diego, Go! And contemplating shaving Kyra's head.

I say next year we screw the lima beans and just order pizza, sweetie. OH, and maybe we eat it together! Wouldn't that be fun?

*Sorry, to anyone who's received this post twice in their blogfeed, but I couldn't take it anymore... I had to fix the really, really ugly typos. For what it's worth, I left the not-quite-so-homely ones alone.*