"Come on, come on, put your hand into the fire. Explain, explain..."

Due to my rather sad incoherence lately, which makes me cringe to think of, I shall try very hard to make this post contain something resembling logic. "Try" being the operative word, I am afraid. 

I commence!

I am currently wearing four shirts. Yes. Four (4). This is due to the fact that people keep giving me them. First of all, Fraulein gave me two lovely ones yesterday, designed to be layered. Therefore I decided to wear them today along with the charming brown pants Gid picked out for me. Mommy said he first found a short, printed bright green housecoat. She steered him away from that, whereupon he gravitated to a low cut pink and white striped shirt. (He is four, after all). Mommy disentangled him from that one, where he found these pants. Which are a signal success, actually. (They are soft and have cool buttons, hence his choice of them.) So I was wearing my new outfit today, when I was given a free t-shirt to wear to the Relay for Life. As it wasn't hot out, I just put the shirt on over top of my current wardrobe. One ill-fitting t-shirt over regular clothes= One volunteer uniform. Fraulein and I, in appropriate volunteer garb, were helping out with children's activities. This was made extra interesting by the fact that we were working with groups of mixed ages and sexes. I tell you, anyone who says that there is no significant difference between girls and boys is seriously deluded. Possibly on drugs. Fraulein and I, used to working with little girls, unwisely let one of the boys be "Simon" in Simon Says. As our first game. The first thing the little dervish said? 

"Simon says Armpit Fart!"

Right. Um, some people don't know how to do that. So why don't you try another one? He ponder this, and then comes up with a different command. 

"Simon says run up the ramp and come back and hit me in the face!"

Takes "cruin' for a bruisin'" to a new level, eh? By the way, I'm not honouring the child with the appellation "dervish" based solely on the Simon Says incident. There were other events. With witnesses. Anyhow, after our volunteer time was nearly over Fraulein and I were each given another t-shirt. It was even less hot then. Hence the four shirts as current outfit components. (I know I'm extra riveting today. Hush. I'm working on re-growing coherence and logic neurons.)

The birthday yesterday was lovely. Since the Relay was today, and as a result the family would be occupied most of my actual birthday day, we celebrated yesterday. We had a formal dress-up dinner. Slonner was demonstrating the twirling action of her skirt before the dinner. Mark my words, if that girl ever takes ballroom dancing she will devastate anyone within range. Totally maul the opposition, in truth. The meal was delicious, and the company was well dressed and charming. Then we opened gifts, some of which I have already mentioned. I should mention another one at this point simply because it is so very noteworthy. My parents, whom I rise up and call blessed, said that they would pay the difference in my saving and the computer I had picked out. Blessed, I tell you. 

Then we played Duck Duck Goose, as is tradition. And this time we ALL played, which was fun. There was also a scavenger hunt and musical chairs, where I, forgetting I was wearing weapons on my feet, trod rather heavily on Daddy's foot. After a particularly hotly contested game of musical chairs Daddy was in fact forced to sit out and be the judge of the scavenger hunt. Which my team lost, even though the other team had a math CORRECTION book, instead of math book. But since I am a just and merciful birthday girl, and do not misuse my awesome power, I did not raise a big fuss about this blatant deception on the part of my nefarious siblings. Also no one was listening. 

Then Frualein and I watched Stardust in the evening. All in all, a marvelous celebration. Fraulein and I have had rather a lot of movie-watching incidents lately. I'm not going to go back and count them, since I'm lazy, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot. We also watched a couple of episodes of Avatar this morning. That was amusing, since she has been rather politely and patiently tolerant of my delight in the show in the past. So today I sat down and said, "we're going to watch the first episode. The beginning of it, at least. We can stop in eight minutes or so." She is silent (implies consent! See, I did learn something from my first aid course!) and the watching commences. We get through the introduction and one half scene. She pipes up "I don't think we're going to be able to stop this!" *grins* NO, this is not gloating. It's just happiness. Right. Happiness.