Cheeks of Fire

I'd rent that. For a friend.

The title of this post is entirely gratuitous. While e is teething with her 2 year molars there is little of the red-cheekedness (?) of yore. N. There is the poking around the mouth with the entire hand of ere. But enough archaicisms, if that's what 'ere' and 'yore' are. They may be accepted spellings for 'your' and 'here' in Alberta, I don't know.

Sunday was e's second birthday. It turned out to be my first experience with a little girl's birthday. I am grateful to all attendees for failing to provide my daughter with a fairy costume, or princess outfit, replete with cake and a guillotine. Thank you. (If it is not apparent, I am experiencing another bout of contentedness. I expect this too shall pass and I can resume with the regular program of insulting people who annoy me, preferably without them knowing about it, soon.)

This year we decided to hold the party at a local park where we could enjoy a brief spell in the fish jail before venturing to Lumberman's Arch for a feast on PB&J, melon balls, and cake. Maybe we'd have a splash in the kid's water park or harass geese on the foreshore. There would be much running on the grass and childish screaming. The children would learn this from observing us. We figured we'd have these options and many more.

What we did not anticipate was the presence of this, which made the park look more like this than this. Some of the attendees suggested the marquee tents, PA system, and seating arrangements exemplified my largesse but I maintain the overall size of my ass had nothing to do with the PA system, DJ, and tented affair going on all over the open field, although I was glad they took the time to look at it anyway, because I crave attention, especially even bad attention. I feared we would not find a place to sit let alone find an area for us to sit, eat, and have child-related diversions. I was atremble with child-birthday-screwup-related anxieties. (Oh, wait til her analyst hears of this! What a wretch am I... the sound of the world's smallest violin... etc...)

Nonetheless, our friends helped us reorganize the location aspect of things, directing us to a picnic area (who'd have thought of that?) adjacent to a sizeable playground, and I believe a good time was had by nearly all. I, for one, enjoyed playing on the jungle gym. (Still got the moves.) Importantly, there were no fatalities and nobody went missing.

There were many rich moments to experience that day. I cannot, on account of my years in the bong mines, scraping out ore, recall a single one, though I remain suffused with warm fuzzies to date. (I am seeing a physician for this shortly.) I can recall the expression on e's face as we sang Happy Birthday and moreover that my step-mom "helped" e learn the phrase: Yippee! I'm 2 and you're not! which e uttered on completion of the song and more than 5 but less than 20 times, or under the "my what an annoying little creature you are" threshold. Lucky for her, or I might've... I might have, um, asked her to stop, or something. Yeah. Because I am strict. Look out.

So, to summarize: birthday party, little girls, balloons (did I mention the balloons? There were balloons, leaking helium, floating just above the ground like some kind of knock-off on the Prisoner), cake, children, cake, juice, parents, child herding, and a walkathon. C'est complet.

P-man out.