Why are you giving me a dead person’s sheep?

I originally attempted to post this last night, but there was a glitch and the entire bushel of brilliance nonsense vanished into thin air.

This had to qualify as the most interesting birthday to date. Middlest and I both had irregular sleep and found ourselves up at the same time. Since it was after midnight, I opened my present from my sister: a charming print, a pair of earrings, and a scarf knit up from yarn that I slipped into her Christmas package last year. Here's a beauty shot of the unopened box.

Once we were officially awake, I took Middlest for the monthly doctor’s appointment, then up to the pharmacy in Wylie to fill a couple of Rx’s. We came home, dropped off the things we didn’t need, and headed to Arlington to pick up Fourthborn and begin the day’s festivities. We pulled into Whataburger to get them sustenance while I was having lunch with Fourthborn’s former fiancé who is still a member of this family whether he likes it or not. This is when I discovered that my wallet had gone missing.

We ransacked the truck. I dropped my kids at Barnes & Noble with the snacks they’d brought to while away the afternoon, had lunch with J, and drove back home to check the house. The wallet wasn’t there. I checked the Tardis again. Still not there. So I fired up my phone and discovered that the pharmacy had been trying to reach me for four hours.

Ahem. I drove up to Wylie again, sheepishly picked up my wallet, tanked the truck, and picked up my kids after hitting the drive-thru at In N Out, because I didn’t want to face the nice people at Whataburger again.

I should mention at this point that it had been raining off and on all day, in varying degrees of intensity, and that my left side got a good soaking at the drive-thru. By the time I got a block or two west to pick up the kids, it had subsided ever so slightly. Oh, and Middlest is in the process of ejecting a second kidney stone so is not moving all that fast.

We stopped at Home Depot to use the loo. At which point I discovered that my phone was now missing. After ransacking my purse and the poor Tardis again, we discovered it just over the horizon of the dashboard.

They inhaled their burgers and fries while I hobbled into the party store to order balloons for the dinner. I’d bought a Grim Reaper balloon online because I couldn’t find one locally. I have wanted this particular balloon for twenty-five years, ever since I spotted it just before my 40th birthday.

We hung out at Half Price Books until it was time to pick up the balloons, then crossed over the freeway to the restaurant. They seated us at the table for 16 which I’d reserved, and Fourthborn helped me free the balloons from their protective wrapping. Family started trickling in. Firstborn and Willow, Secondborn and 2BDH and the Bitties and a young cousin who is living with them, 1BDH, LittleBit and her roommate, Mel and Squishy. I took these before everybody showed up, but this is most of the tribe.

We filled every seat prepared for us.

Middlest’s pain crested, so Mel and Squishy took my kid home to their house while I took Fourthborn back to her apartment to pack for a brief stay with us. Lots of hugs. I remembered my take-home, largely because Middlest and I put Fourthborn in charge of it. We had to circle back as we were leaving the parking lot to grab Mel and Squishy’s leftovers just as the staff was clearing the table.

Because it was my birthday, the staff “serenaded” me while I wore an enormous purple velvet sombrero. (My respect for the vaqueros who ride in the Fourth of July parade has gone up tenfold. Those hats are heavy!)

When I got home, I discovered that one of my new earrings had gone walkabout. I put new batteries in the flashlight and checked the Tardis, but it was nowhere to be seen. I almost lost both of them, but I found the other dangling like a pennant from my hair and caught it just in time. This, after crimping the hooks twice while wearing them. The good news is, I have a Murano glass earring (somewhere) in the same colors that was orphaned a decade or more ago, and I can wear them as a mismatched pair.

Oh. The sheep. I almost forgot. LittleBit’s gift to me was a resin sheep that she found at an estate sale. Hence the title of this post.