Exotic is as Exotic Does

It's birthday season again, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my MOTHER and my LITTLE, both of whom are incredible ladies, although in very different ways, and many thanks to both of them for being born on the same date, to make it easier for me to remember both birthdays, as one reminds me of the other, and vice versa.

This has got me started thinking about birthdays, and what they are, and things like that.

In my office at the B, last year, the ladies took me out to lunch for my birthday, as is somewhat of a custom in our group at the B--there's four of us and we each take turns planning for the next lady's birthday after ours--and they asked me what I did to celebrate my birthday that year, although technically it had been the previous year as, being that my birthday is always in December, we hadn't gotten a chance to celebrate it in the same month or even in the same year, holiday schedules being what they are, plus the added complication of moving offices. (And we're moving AGAIN! Joy.)

Anyway, they asked me what I had done, and I said, "Oh, a bunch of my girlfriends threw a Trader Joe's themed party, in which everything came from Trader Joe's, because that's how *I* entertain, and we all congregated at someone's apartment and drank too much wine for a weeknight and just chatted."

There was a moment of silence, and then all the ladies sighed.

"Wow, that sounds...WONDERFUL," my cube mate said, and the other two made emphatic agreeing noises.

I was surprised--not because that celebration wasn't fun, because it was! But because it was pretty low-key to be considered, in my mind, as something "wonderful", at least with that kind of emphasis. After all, the year before, for my 30th birthday, I had thrown a fancy cocktail party in the middle of the week. Roommate made two kinds of punch cocktails from a signed punch recipe book that the head bartender at one of our favorite local cocktail havens had loaned her; we bought out the local Trader Joe's and offered foods galore; we insisted that everyone appear in fancy dress. It was a Happening. Sitting around and drinking wine seemed a little more low key in comparison.

But the ladies around me at the B are wives and mothers, in addition to being careerists, and they have a lot of demands on their time, especially now, as their kids are starting high school and such, and to them, a crew of ladies sitting around on a weeknight drinking too much wine for a school night and just chatting was the epitome of Wonderful.

Good to remember.