electric boogaloo

My mom used to always say that she wanted our birthdays to be memorable. So every year, she would buy a houseful of balloons and do a cake and make tacos or whatever we wanted. And every year, my dad would offer to shoot the dog.
“What?” he’d say, “They would always remember… ah yes, my seventh birthday! I’ll never forget it. That was the year dad shot my dog.”

So if memorable is the measure of a successfull birthday, then I think we did pretty well.

The lucky thing is that Graham waited until after we…
drove down to Glen Rose
and scoped out the beautiful lodge at the animal preserve
and pretended to know how to play chess on a wooden board with little hand-carved animal-shaped pieces
and went to a restaurant with animal heads all over the wall, which amused Nicolaus the Naturalist because he doesn’t know yet where animal heads come from
and which made Graham shout out “Bouse! BOUSE.” because our dog really does look very much like a deer
and ate some of the best chicken fried steak in existance
and came back to our room
and lit a fire in the fireplace
and cuddled in bed watching our latest Netflix, Frontier House
and listened to the wolves howl in the distance
and slept
and woke up early
and said “Happy Birthday Nicolaus!”
and Nicolaus told me in a sleepy voice all of the bigger kiddish things he could do now, like help me chop onions and load the dishwasher and do laundry like I ever do any of those things, but it was very sweet
and went down to the pavillion overlooking a beautiful landscape, where they serve breakfast
and ate
and visited a little with some of the campers, who were all very impressed by our son’s obvious fourness
and saw wild turkeys which are huge and hideous
and drove halfway through the wildlife preserve
and fed llamas and zebras and antelopes and very rare exotic “white-tailed” deer
to the delight of The Naturalist
Who is four, I hope you know
and stopped at the little petting zoo to pet the goats and things
(part of Kevin’s plot to convince the children to outvote me on his housegoat idea)
and bought a pair of binoculars for the naturalist
but were still an hour’s drive to the end of the wildlife preserve thingy
to start throwing up.

And I waited until we were back in Dallas, at my parents’ house for balloons and cake and singing and presents and magical birthday hugs all before I started my own throwing up.

The CAR waited until we were about to drive home for the night. To start throwing up.

So Graham and I have spent the day gradually recovering from a night that I can honestly say, was grody to the maximum amount of grody acheivable with only two family members participating. Kevin has spent the day taking the minivan back to the dealer and researching what kind of car we will be buying soon (hint: not a dodge). Nicolaus says the naturalist’s birthday was Great! and has spent today looking at all of us through binoculars.

Happy fourth birthday, Scout. We love you to the end of this earth. I hope your fifth birthday is boring as shit.