Silver Lining Saturday, part XIV

Welcome to this week's episode of Silver Lining Saturday!

For one thing, yes, yesterday was my birthday. I don't really make a big deal about my own birthday anymore. Once you can drink, drive, and vote (preferrably not all at once), what's the dif? And, definitely, once one becomes a mom, one's own birthday pretty much takes on the same priority as waxing the lawnmower. BUT, it's still nice to have people say a heartfelt, "Happy Birthday!", and I did get some of those... after a bit of prompting.

On that note, there was the Neighbor Flanders lunch. I told her that I would be "in and out" a lot on Friday. Upon arriving in after a particular out, I found a message from her on my answering machine informing me that she would be delivering my lunch in about a half an hour. The call had come in about a half an hour prior, so I braced myself for impact. She arrived a few minutes later armed with a takeout bag from Zio's Italian Kitchen, complete with salad, entree, roll, drink, cake, packet of plasticware, and personalized birthday card. I felt horribly guilty that she had done this after all the work I put into avoiding her. She assured me that she "just wanted to", and I suppose I should be thankful for her thinking of me, silver lining that it is.

And on the food frenzy theme, the Thanksgiving Feast at the elementary school was a fun success. Coincidentally, I did, in fact, have mashed potato duty (looks around, paranoidly wondering if any school peeps read this blog), gravy too - a double dipper! There was a very large turnout of parents, and we could hardly scoop fast enough to keep up. I served with some fun moms, and I didn't have to cook anything nor clean up!

I'm thankful that my flexible work schedule allows me to do this school volunteering stuff while still having a job that I find fun and rewarding. One of my tutor students informed me that he scored well on the test that we had prepared for. He's happy. Mom's happy. Everybody's happy.

We won the office football pool again at Magnum's work. I don't remember how many weeks we've won, but we've actually got a pretty decent record going. We do our picks together as a family, and the kids get a share of the pot if we win - gotta get that gambling ethic instilled early. Plus, it provides a good outlet for Magnum's competetive nature and keeps him from griping (too much) about the government.
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