Friday Five ~ A Very Merry Unbirthday

This meme brought to you by the RevGalBlogPals.

1. Favorite birthday cake/ice cream/dessert: Immediate thought is my mom's Chocolate Torte ... that was my standard request for the last several birthdays-at-home. But I'm always up for ice cream. Or milkshakes. Or cookies. Or cake. Or ....

2. Surprise Parties -- have you ever given or received one? Growing up, we would often have "midnight parties" -- we'd go wake up the birthday person and have some of their favorite treats (as sanctioned and performed by the parental units, of course). My freshman year in college, my parents had set it up with my roommates -- there was a thoroughly unexpected not-quite-midnight party with all my floormates awaiting me when I got back into the room the night before my birthday.

A couple years ago we did a 40^th anniversary one for my parents. Except we knew that my mom wouldn't like being underdressed and the like, so we took advantage of the fact that my brother-in-law was born just a few hours before my parents got married (a story that's a great way to check if people are really listening!). So, she thought we were doing a surprise party for my brother-in-law. My sisters, of course, did an excellent job of pulling off the scam, complete with a guest list for my mom to check, having one of his co-workers RSVP to my mom, and even a set-up wherein my mom thought she had given away the secret to my brother-in-law. In fact, my mom ended up cleaning and decorating my sister's house for her own surprise party -- they just replaced the birthday stuff with anniversary stuff. Needless to say, it was quite entertaining when my mom thought she showed up early to help set up and all her friends are standing around the inside of the house. She stood at the door frozen for a good three minutes, mouth dropped open, trying to process it all. My dad, on the other hand, picked up pretty quickly and just started laughing at the whole thing.

I've also been involved in a few surprises here at the monastery, but you know the saying .... what happens in the monastery stays in the monastery. :-)

3. Favorite birthday present: Can I change it to worst? Because that's a lot easier to select.

I turned 30 during my novice year at the monastery. Since the novice year is set by church law to be a more restrictive time, I had plans with some friends that they would pick up some pizza and we would watch Finding Nemo (since I hadn't been able to go see it in the theater because I was a novice). Unfortunately, right before the fun was to begin, I discovered that what I thought might have been a mouse dashing across my floor on Monday night was in fact truly a mouse, as he took the opportunity to saunter a bit more slowly across my floor on this-now-Friday evening. I had had it (because of some of the other issues involving his previous days' residence in my room and our thoughts that he had been caught) and stormed down the three flights of stairs (he climbed all the way up to visit me?!?) and went for a rant-filled walk outside. In the meantime, apparently some of my good formation buddies attempted to catch him with a Cool Whip container. When I came back, I decided that since we knew he was in my room, we should just put the traps in there and wait him out. Which we did. And, to lessen his chances for escape, I opened my door a minimally as possible .... and slept on the couch down the hall during the weekend. Lots of other tidbits to tell about this extremely adventurous creature (as discovered when I cleaned. My whole room. And saw he had been everywhere.), but I need some sleep, too, so I'll just save them for another day.

4. What do you think of those candles that won't blow out? Depends. Am I on the receiving or giving end?

5. Best. birthday. ever. Again, off the top of my head .... 25^th. 24 had been tough ... I had been working in the boarding school in Louisiana for a few months, and was gonna start taking courses to get certified to teach. This meant I had to take the Praxis test, but for some reason the only location available for me was somewhere in Mississippi. Slightly obnoxious, but I was gonna take my very good friend along (who had actually gotten me the job) and we were gonna make a little road-trip fun weekend out of it. Except that the week before she basically disappeared -- we just got an announcement in a faculty meeting that she was on a leave of absence from the school -- and I didn't even get to say goodbye. So not only did I not know even where the only friend I had down there had gone, I had to spend my birthday driving to some stupid test way far away without the person who was supposed to come make it enjoyable.

So, the next year .... a couple friends from home who have birthdays right around mine decided to remedy the situation. The two of them flew down to Jacksonville (one of them was from there and still had season tickets to the Jaguars) and I flew across from Louisiana to meet up with them, and we had a weekend of fun with her family, a Jags game, and a day at Disney World. Two very good friends with whom I had probably the most laughs than with anyone else .... and that weekend was just more of the same.