Y'all can relax now. The BIG Birthday Weekend is over. Now to chill into the Birth Month. ;) UPDATED

I started this post on the sixth, y'all. I was gonna have something important to say to everyone within a week, at least, of the previous post. It is now ten days since my last post, and depending on how long it takes me to get all my thoughts out, it could easily be eleven (it's currently pushing eleven p.m. and I don't even know how much I have to say; blargh).

So let's see. The big milestone birthday was Friday, June 3rd. I'd sent out a metric shit-ton of Facebook invitations to the milestone birthday blowout gathering of new friends and "old", taking place on Saturday the 4th, and gotten responses from significantly fewer than a metric shit-ton of invitees. 'Sokay, the party was gonna be what it was gonna be. Stephen and I had made a run to Costco to get hot dogs and burgers, just in case my guests didn't clearly understand that the party was meant to be a chance for me to eat food that they had provided (stop looking at me like that; instead of having everyone out at a restaurant where they'd have to order their meals, I wanted a potluck!). While we were at Costco, we discovered a decent price on a variety case of beer (for Stephen) and an awesome price on a variety case of wine coolers for me, because, hello, 80's themed birthday party? Wine coolers, DUH! If only we could have found Bartles and Jaymes. That would have been "the shit", y'all. I'm tellin' ya.

Then, out of the blue, my sister, InnerHippie, shows up at my door on Thursday night, having planned to surprise me for my actual birthday day, Friday. Only she didn't know the code to get into the building, and she didn't even have my apartment number had she gotten into the building, and my phone was dead, so when she tried calling, she got my voicemail. It was like 10:30 or something, and she'd flown into Burbank from Billings, Montana, to spend One Day with me, as a surprise, and she had to go back to her hotel so she could call me a poopy-head on Facebook. I was brushing my teeth to go to bed, when Stephen pointed out the post. I had him call her hotel while I charged my phone, and she changed back outta her jammies to come back and get me.

InnerHippie with our free donuts for #NationalDonutDay,
which also happened to be #MyBirthday. We'll see if it
falls on #MyBirthday or the #1stJuneFriday next year!

when I told the dude my name, THIS is
what he wrote! That's pretty
damn close; we expected "ML"

 I spent that night with her in her hotel, just so we could get a good jump-start on our sister-catch-up. I think we made it into bed and lights out by 1 a.m. We got up the next morning and hung out all day. We had donuts and got my free birthday GrandSlam at Denny's.

My meal was egg- and dollar-free (those are
GRITS, y'all), and hers wasn't too pricey.
Looks like she's wearing a party hat, no? That's a lamp.

I was able to give her her first IKEA experience as well as her first Trader Joe's experience. She was not overly impressed with either one. When I say that I hate shopping, I'm really only talking about clothing shopping. InnerHippie really (Seriously, REALLY) hates shopping. Okay! But we spent the day together; we swam a bit in the hotel pool (which was not necessarily "heated" per se, but it was definitely warmer than my apartment pool); we collected Stephen and went out for an Italian dinner. It was a really good day, and the best possible way I could have asked to spend my birthday day, had I known to ask for it. My only regret was that she'd made her plans around Friday only, and she had to leave too early Saturday to be able to attend even a tiny bit of my party. And that's just me being selfish. I wanted to squeeze every second of her visit out and drain it into a spritzer bottle so I could just spritz myself with "sister visit" anytime I felt like it after the fact. Wow. Putting those words here let some onion-cutting ninjas sneak into my apartment. Those bastards are good. They didn't even open the front door!

So, anyway. We got her on her plane and headed over to the party, where the homeowner-hostess helped eightiesify my hairdo, homeowner-host started up his Spotify playlist (for whatever reason, all that work that Stephen had done to save mp3's wasn't talking to the sound system, drat), and we started drinking. Let me tell ya. The differences between 80's wine coolers and those of today are significant. First of all, Bartles and Jaymes coolers had some weird pulp in them. I think that was to maybe help them taste more like lemonade than beer, but at any rate, they were Wine Coolers... with pulp. And they came in one flavor: pulpy wine-ish. And they were not as heavy as a glass of wine or even a bottle of beer, but they did have at least 4% alcohol by volume. The Seagrams wine coolers that we bought had no pulp. They were in clear glass bottles so you could see what color flavor you were getting. Oh, who am I kidding? The "lime margarita" tasted green, the "fuzzy navel" tasted orange (colored), the "piña colada" tasted blue, etc. (the other three "flavors" were varying shades of pink). Their labels indicate a 3.2% alcohol by volume, which is a lie if I've ever read one. These puppies have zero alcohol in them. I drank a lot that night (well, at least I emptied many bottles), but by the time the party was wrapped, I was sober, and I drove us home. With nearly a case of beer, and nearly a case of wine coolers (huh? how was that possible?) and most of the meat we'd brought, too. Seagram's wine coolers are simply expensive bottles of "grown-up" (HA!) Koolaid. Some of my guests brought gifts, so I have some "good stuff" waiting for me to finish off my case. Yeah, baby. A champagne, two wines, and a lemonade that I'm told is perfect with vodka. I'm down with that. Just gotta get some vodka now (we left our liquor cabinet in North Carolina two years ago. Just no room to pack it. Someone had a nice surprise next to that dumpster!).

The party was pretty low-key but a ton of fun. The couple handfuls of attendees interacted with one another, and I think a good time was had by all. Stephanie came in her 80's 'do, and she brought another friend who was also eightiesified, and with me, homeowner-hostess, and Stephen (channeling Don Johnson, natch), the 80's were sufficiently represented.

Me and the homeowner-hostess, drinking wine coolers in
our Eightiesified hairdos and sorta 80's outfits

Davis and Stephanie;
Girls just GONNA have Fun!

photographer dared Jenn to "Goose" him. It wasn't even
a Triple-Dog-Dare. I ADORE the look on HER face!

Besides, there was a most excellent playlist running, and a lot of the menfolk in attendance were competing with each other to name the artist first. I won only one or two rounds at the most, but honestly, I don't think I played more than three! HA!

selfie at home, in the bathroom
(my go-to selfie spot), after the fact

Front AND back!

What have we all been doing since that fateful Saturday, a week ago? I guess I'll have to catch you up on that stuff in another post! See you again in a bit! So here are the thank you's: Cheryl, Jenn, Dave, Stephen, Stephanie, other guests who probably don't read my blog, and Lee. I think you all know why I'm thanking you, specifically. THANK YOU.