They Call Me Mum

Wow.  Who knew attending your own birthday party would be so tiring?

So, I know, it’s been a while since I posted.  There’s really been nothing to post about.  Until now, that is.

I’ve been knitting.  Sewing still makes me want to cry, so no progress on that front.  But I’ve been plodding along on the QAL Shawl and the Goddess Knits Mystery Shawl.  I’m at about 25% on the Mystery Shawl, with 22,842 of 91,194 total stitches completed.  On the QAL, I’m at about 80% done, with roughly 47,000 stitches of 59,216 total stitches completed.  Damn, that’s a lot of stitches.

Still no word on the job I applied for.  Still going with the “no news is good news” theory.

I took off the better part of last week.  Wednesday was spent doing lots of nothing.  Always a good time.  We did some errand running, I think, but nothing much of anything.

Thursday I had a hair appointment to get my ends trimmed and the color touched up.  I let the stylist talk me into highlights.  I said, “OK, but subtle.  Maybe a shade or two lighter than the color I’ve got going now.”  I left the salon looking like I did a bad home highlighting job.  I was so disappointed.  And my hair felt like it was in worse condition than when I’d gone in.  I know I could have gone back and had the stylist redo it all, but it was easier and quicker to stop at the CVS on the way home and grab my normal shades and fix it myself.  On the upside, the sections that were nearly bleach blond are now subtle highlights of the shade I wanted.

Thursday evening a friend of ours, who is on the road too damn much, managed to stop by and go out to dinner with us, and then sat on the deck with us catching up for a bit.

On Friday, TOH arranged for me to have a day at the spa.  There’s a day spa in Occoquan, and he booked the full package for me.  He dropped me off just before 11:00 am, and picked me up at 4:30 pm.  In that time, I had an hour-long massage, a complete facial, and a manicure/pedicure with the paraffin dip treatment.  They also ordered lunch for me.  It was fantastic.

Friday evening, several of our friends arrived early for Saturday’s party.  We all sat up late and talked and started making a dent in the mountain of beer, hard cider and soda that we’d stocked up for the party.  I think we stayed up well past 3 AM.

On Saturday, people started arriving around noon-ish.  Over the course of the day (unless I’m forgetting someone) we had just shy of 40 guests.  Not quite as big as our New Year’s party, but a good sized group.  We managed not to piss off the neighbors, even though we were out on the back deck until at least 4 AM and there were people coming and going the whole time.  It was a great party.  I got to see people that I hadn’t seen for months and months.  We had good food, good drinks, etc.  We spent quite a bit of time in the hot tub, especially once the sun went down and things cooled off.  We had cake.  (It’s a birthday party, there MUST be cake!)

On Sunday, we spent the better part of the day recovering.  And some cleaning.  We needed to make sure all the trash and recycling got out on the curb.  I think everyone was gone by around noon-ish.  And we went back to bed or crashed on the couch to get some more sleep.  We were supposed to go see Hootie and the Blowfish at Wolf Trap in the evening, but right around the time we would have left the house to get there, the thunderstorms rolled in.  And since we had lawn seats, rather than pavilion, we decided to just skip it.

Overall, I couldn’t have had a better birthday weekend.  Maybe turning 40 won’t be so bad after all.