Enjoying My Joy! (Subject to the Obi-Wan Rule)

People keep telling me “Happy Birthday” today because people do that each year around this time.  When they ask how my weekend was I tell them it was "FANTASTIC!".

I don't know what they conjure in their head when I say "fantastic" because hell if I know what their fantasies are - I don't know what qualifies as FANTASTIC to them.  But for me, this weekend was THE BOMB.  It was WICKED COOL.  It was THE BEE’S KNEES.  My weekend was fantasy come to life.  It was all this man could hope for and then some.

The Epic quality of my weekend is, like everything else of, subject to the Obi-Wan Rule of Truth.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

My point of view: I am a rich, rich, wealthy man.  

I work a ton of hours and waste Thanksgiving-style portions of my life commuting.  I have a small house and two car payments, so my family doesn't go on vacation.  We rarely go to a restaurant or the movies.  I am out of shape, vaguely unhealthy and some important parts of my body have been abused and no longer work properly.  My entire structural integrity is iffy at best.  My doctor gets drunk and cries in despair after I visit her office.  AND I have a well-documented attitude problem.

And I am a wealthy, wealthy man who just enjoyed the mess out of THE BEST WEEKEND EVER.

I rid myself of the foul taste of Work Week with Friday Night Movie Night. [Daughter] had friends on her sofa.  I had [Wife] and [Dog] on the love seat.  I did my usual thing where I turn the movie volume up painfully high until [Wife] complains, so I compromise and turn the volume down to the Very High Level I actually wanted and everybody is happy.  The walls shook with the sound of space explosions.  Good times.

On Saturday afternoon I dragged [Wife] and [Daughter] bowling.  I haven’t been bowling in at least a decade.  I probably should have used a little happy-colored 9-pound ball because I am weak and floppy.  Instead I used MY OWN DAMN BALL, which is a blood-red 15-pounder that’s drilled for my OWN DAMN FINGERS.  And thank you very much, I got ELEVEN STRIKES over three games with my own damn ball that I could barely control after the first two games.  I tore up my left hamstring and pulled a muscle in the right side of my back, and I did it all using MY OWN DAMN BALL.  It was GREAT.  And now I walk with a cool-ass Pimp Strut!

Saturday evening (ice on hamstring, ice on back, borderline overdose on Advil), [Wife] gave me twenty minutes’ notice to get cleaned up before a parade of friends came to my house to celebrate my birthday (Also known as: my inexorable downward slide toward birthday gifts of removable teeth and devices with large buttons).  

[Wife] had set up the party in secret because I am curmudgeonly and a pain in the ass about my birthday.  This was allegedly a Midlife Birthday Party; kind of a Birthday Party Greatest Hits party because I never have parties.

As the evening progressed, amazing people just kept coming through my door: my wee home was packed with people I've been meaning to call, people I haven’t been in the same room with for fifteen or twenty years, people I miss dearly, people who I grew up with and people who kept me company while I refused to grow up.

It wasn't everybody I love, but I loved everybody who came.  My home was filled with food and spirits and a steady stream of outrageous conversation that was in no way suitable for polite company.  Thankfully, my wife didn't invite any polite company.  I spilled sauce on myself and snorted beer out my nose.  I laughed like it was my last chance to laugh before the Laugh Police came to outlaw laughter. I woke up hoarse on Sunday.

On Sunday evening, despite my proven track record of saying things that cause the entire room to freeze in their tracks and then stare at me, [Wife] and I attended an Imminent Infant Shower for our friends.  Their home was filled with people they love.  There was champagne and unidentifiable snacks and laughter and young humans using the unidentifiable snacks as role-play objects.  There was spilled alcohol and tiny outfits and stories of Vagina-Mangling Newborns and Epidurals Gone Wild and LOVE ALL AROUND.

Stereotypical Mid-life Crisis Guy Birthday Weekend script: Guy rents sports car, drives to Las Vegas, picks up Random Young Hot Chick, has wild weekend of drunken debauchery, comes home to angry wife and apologizes with fingers crossed behind his back.

No crisis for me - I dig my life.  Also I cannot afford a sports car or a trip to Vegas.

These two weekend parties filled with Award-Winning-Caliber strangewonderful folks was my version of a wild Las Vegas weekend.  And I did get to have an alcohol-fueled Honeymoon-level bed-breaking weekend with the Hot Chick I married.  And that’s a good thing, because my right hand and wrist are useless after bowling.

Getting back to Obi-Wan:

Depending on your point of view, my weekend wasn't anything truly epic or unbelievable.  But it's all about my point of view.

And from my glass-half-full point of view I:

• went to TWO parties filled with high-quality mega-talented people
• was physically debilitated by multiple ball-handling activities I very much enjoyed
• watched my Oakland Athletics sweep their division rivals and reduce their Magic Number to Eight

Sure, from a certain point of view my weekend could have been better.  Everything could always be “better”.  But that way lies madness and discontent.

From my point of view?

MY LIFE IS FREAKING AWESOME.