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Giving Away My Birthday

November 29, 2012 By

My 40th birthday

During the weeks leading up to my 40th birthday, I had a bit of a freak-out. It was the first year that I was really bothered by the idea of getting older. I has this sense of life having passed me by, and I started to regret wasted time, lost opportunities and mis-spent youth.

As it happened, turning 40 worked out really well for me. A few days after my birthday that year, I officially became a Canadian citizen. Approximately five minutes later, my now-husband got down on one knee and proposed to me, right there in front of the citizenship judge and about 100 fellow new Canadians. I went on to have one of the best years of my life – albeit one fraught with the stress of wedding planning.

With all of that excitement behind me, I am now at an age where my birthdays aren’t really a big deal. All they do, along with the increasing number of grey hairs on my head, is remind me that I’m getting older. So I am quite happy to give my birthday away to someone who can make the most of it.

This Saturday, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.

My younger son James was born on Christmas Day, and in some ways that’s a bit of a rough deal, and we have to work very hard to make sure his birthday gets the recognition it deserves. We have his birthday parties a couple of weeks before Christmas, before everyone is sick to teeth of going to parties. This Saturday happened to be the best day for it this year, and by happy coincidence, that happens to be my birthday.

Someone asked me if I didn’t mind giving up my birthday to host a children’s party. My answer is that although I’m giving away my birthday, I am celebrating it in the best way possible, giving my boy the birthday party he deserves.

I cannot wait. It’s going to be the best birthday ever.

(Photo credit: Gerard Doyle)

 

Filed Under: Birthday, Celebration, Children, National Health Blog Post Month, party Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Rough As A Badger’s Arse

April 18, 2011 By

To say that I am feeling rough today would be an understatement. I have that exhausted, fuzzy-in-the-brain, all-over achy feeling that is usually associated with the aftermath of a weekend of heavy drinking and dedicated partying.

I guess this is partly true. On Saturday our bridal party threw a Jack & Jill party for us. One of the groomsmen showed up with several bottles of wine and a beer-filled cooler that could have sunk a small ship. “Drink!” he commanded. “Enjoy!”

Well, orders are orders. I drank. I enjoyed. The guys crowded around the cooler of beer like bees around a honeypot, while me and most of the other women present tucked into the wine.

It was an outstanding evening. There was food, there were happy people, there was a lovely raffle prize (which was won by my five-year-old), and there was the incredible spectacle of my soon-to-be mother-in-law enthusiastically throwing a pie into the face of her firstborn son, the groom-to-be.

Eventually the guests left, leaving Gerard and I to settle our over-excited children. By the time we fell into an exhausted sleep ourselves, it must have been close to two in the morning.

I woke up yesterday morning with a well-earned hangover – the kind that comes complete with a queasy stomach, an excruciating headache and a death wish. I stumbled into the bathroom to get some extra-strength Tylenol and some water. Then I somehow – probably by luck more than anything else -found my way back to bed, and with the room spinning around me, I went back to sleep.

For a change, the kids were not up at the crack of dawn, as they usually are on weekends. They let me sleep, the little treasures.

When I woke up for the second time, I still felt kind of gross, but at least I felt as if I was going to live. I got up and went for a run (I say that as if it was a seamless event – the process of getting up and going for a run actually took about three hours).

The run was hard. The weather was bad. I was exhausted at the end of it – as if I hadn’t already been exhausted to begin with.

You’d think I would have slept last night, but no. Not only is George going through one of his phases of not sleeping, my mind is chock-full of details right now and just isn’t letting me rest. I tossed and turned and eventually fell into a fitful sleep, not long before I had to wake up.

To borrow a wonderful phrase from a book I read (This Charming Man by Marian Keyes, if you’re interested), today I am feeling as rough as a badger’s arse.

After another seventeen or so cups of coffee, I might start to feel normal.

Filed Under: Fun, hangover, party, running, sleep Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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Running: A Great Hangover Cure

December 20, 2010 By

On Saturday night, Gerard and I went to my work Christmas party.  It was quite a fancy shindig, in the grand ballroom of an expensive hotel.  The waitstaff were wearing black tie and gliding elegantly around the room carrying huge platters.  There were elaborately wrapped guest favours, a lineup for the photo op that reminded me a bit of senior prom, and a dessert table that included two chocolate fountains.  There were free drinks both before and during dinner, so I drank far more than my usual sedate one glass of wine.

Predictably enough, I woke up on Sunday morning with the mother of all red wine hangovers.  You know the kind – dry mouth, queasy stomach, little men with little but very real jackhammers on the inside of your head.  What I really wanted to do was eat Tylenol like candy, and then roll over and go back to sleep for the rest of the day.
Instead, I got up, with every movement feeling like torture, and got dressed.  With a fuzzy head, I drove to the community centre, and when I saw my fellow running club members, my “Hi” came out as a weird-sounding croak. When the other runners started running, I gritted my teeth and ran too.

It was a hard run.  Very, very hard.  Of course, I had three things again.  First, I had this massive hangover.  Second, I hadn’t run for three weeks.  Third, I was recovering from a nasty bout of bronchitis. Considering all of this, it’s a miracle that I was able to get out and run in the first place.  A hard run was made harder by snowy, slippery conditions, and by the time I’d run 4km, my heart rate was way up.

In the end, I managed just over 5km, and I didn’t do it very well.  The distance runner in me was disappointed with this dismal performance, but the plain old runner in me was thrilled to be back on the road again after an enforced break of three weeks.  The best part of all?  The run knocked the hangover right out of me, and I felt great afterwards, and happily joined the other runners for breakfast (side note: breakfasts contain a huge amount of protein for one meal).

The key to all of this for me is that I am back.  Yes, I had bronchitis and no, I am not quite 100% yet.  But I am well enough to run again, and confident that I will start the new year on a strong note when I do the January 1st Resolution Run.

Filed Under: bronchitis, Christmas, hangover, party, running Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,