Birthday shenanigans

My birthday has come and gone.  My dreaded 35th birthday and accompanying midlife crisis.  My birthday actually turned out pretty fun.  My entire family (parents, sisters, their families) came to my house for a "surprise" party.  This alone was enough to make it a memorable day.  Coordinating the schedules of eight adults to be in the same place at the same time (150 miles give or take a few from their home) and going on a road trip with six kids is akin to herding cats, so the fact that everybody (even asshole brother in law) came was pretty remarkable.  It wasn't a total surprise, because let's face it, infertility kind of ruined surprises for me (particularly those involving kids, even family kids).  Hubs told me about a week ahead of time and made me promise to act surprised.  I'm glad he told me because it really helped me mentally prepare myself for the visit.  (Though I think that we can all agree that a man who goes to the grocery store and comes home with food for a large cookout then cleans the house from top to bottom, un-nagged, is enough to raise suspicion.)

This was also their first time that my family got to see our new house in person.  They loved it, and even though our house is quite small, it didn't feel as crowded as I expected it would. 

My actual birthday was handled the way I've found to be most effective when facing hard things.  Sarcasm, mildly inappropriate humor, and alcohol.  I don't know if you have seen those stupid monthly birthday baby things on social media.  Essentially the parent snaps a picture of the baby with a sicker on their shirt that says "x months" and then lists things like likes, how many teeth they have, height, weight, etc.  I think they are stupid, so naturally I wanted to make fun of them.  My sister created a birthday board for my 420 month birthday and we did a little photo shoot with it (complete with me in a sparkly tutu).  I think that most everybody thought the photos were funny, but I think only few got what I was making fun of.  This was actually the highlight of the day. 

Regarding my midlife crisis, I finally figured out the root cause for it.  Back when we first started trying to have a baby we mutually agreed that we would be done building our family on my 35th birthday, no matter how many kids we had at that point.  We figured that was a comfortable timetable to have two or maybe three kids.  We were naive back then, actually believing that I could get pregnant when we wanted.  As it became evident that we were having trouble and the years started to accumulate, we still stuck to the arbitrary deadline that we set in the beginning.  Even though I've known for a couple of years that kids weren't going to happen for us, somehow approaching (and now passing) this self-imposed deadline adds an extra layer of finality to this.  I feel better now that I've realized this and have calmed down quite a bit.  It's also a valuable lesson in attaching deadlines to things over which we have no control.

You've all done an awesome job supporting me through this midlife crisis and big birthday, so I wanted to tell you about it.  I also want to pass along my thanks because I don't think I would have made it through with my sanity if not for you guys!