What a Birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday and I think I had a blast. Well, maybe I should say I had a memorable birthday. It actually started on Sunday night. I knew that I had a big day at work on Monday so I wanted to go to bed early. Instead, we stayed up in bed watching hulu.com on my laptop. So around midnight, just as the last scene of Eureka is playing out, the dog downstairs starts barking. We keep her in a kennel at night. I walked downstairs to let her outside and decided to sit down in front of my computer downstairs and investigate the internet. Bad idea. Two and a half hours later, after I had delved into all sorts of news, sports, olympics, and theology, I let the dog in and went upstairs. But for some reason I couldn't sleep. Three am, no sleep. Three thirty, still no sleep. Four am, no sleep. I think I drifted off sometime after that and I got up at 7 ish.
So I get to work and start ingesting coffee. I missed breakfast. And I almost missed lunch with the stuff that had to be done RIGHT NOW! I didn't end up eating enough and by 4 pm, I had that "I've had too much sugar, too much caffeine, not enough real food, not enough sleep" feeling. It's a deep-down tummy ache coupled with a fuzzy head feeling. I haven't felt it since college. Yuck. I bumped off work a half-hour early b/c I knew that Monday night I had a Jr Bike team meeting and I didn't want to be woozy. I got home and went straight to bed. Kim wasn't there and when I asked where she was, Joseph responded with "She's gone to get... she's just gone to go do something." I recognize last second b-day shopping when I see it.
I got in a good hour or so of nap before I realized that the meeting would be starting in an hour and getting six kids there takes time and effort. I came out to see my wife taping HAPPY BIRTHDAY down the banister of the stairs. She'd only gotten as far as HAPPY BIRT. She shushed me back into my room for another 5 minutes before inviting me to come downstairs. The kids all hid (really poorly I might add) behind furniture and shouted "surprise!" On the wall, I finally notice, is a couple of clothes hangers with wrapping paper wrapped over my gift. Knowing that the only place in the world that we can afford gifts is on the Dillard's Card, I'm fairly certain that it's a couple of shirts. To my real surprise, it's a couple of Madden games for the GameCube, '06 and '07. Sweet. I've got '04, these sound cool.
Then off to the meeting. At the meeting, I discover that I am the only person that was nominated for Pres, so I'm in charge by default. Again. Then, after a lot of good discussion (too much, I only got one trip through the pizza buffet :-( ), Audrey trips over a chair leg and hits the floor with her skull. No bleeding, but then a friend and nursing student notices that one of her pupils is larger than the other. Aud also wasn't reacting in a typical fashion. She didn't even push away the ice pack. So I got to spend the remainder of my evening in the ER watching the Olympics with my other kids. Actually, for an ER visit, we might have had the best time ever. There was NOBODY else there when we arrived, so she got right in basically. The did an MRI and she's fine. There was a minimum of crying babies. Folks started to arrive as we were waiting and one person noted that she was the oldest of 12 and the her family looked like ours did when they would show up to the ER periodically. I take that as a high compliment.
All in all, we got home around 11 and I was asleep by 12. A long day, a memorable day. But I can't say if it was a good or bad day. Maybe it's best seen as something to survive, not to judge.