I changed computers a week ago. That’s right, I dragged all my files from my 3 resident hard drives into the new resident hard drives of my new Wilson. (Did you ever see that movie of Tom Hanks, Cast Away? Remember his best friend on the island, Wilson? That’s where my Wilson got his name. On those (thankfully not very often) days when I get that “not responding message” and my files hang, I can very well pass for a Tom-Hanks lookalike screaming “Wilson! Wilson!” with that outstretched hand and that distraught look on my face  :D).

Having an updated Wilson should be a great thing, given more gigabytes to play with and just as much RAM… except that the more than 30,000 photos that I had spent months of tagging and organizing in Photoshop Elements have all vanished into thin air. Eaten up by the great abyss. All the re-organizing I have to do makes me feel like I’m about to plunge into the innards of my computer, and frankly, I’m exhausted just thinking about it. 😀

Now why should this be interesting to you? hahaha. That’s easy: it’s my lame excuse for not posting in this blog for a couple of days. Lame, but true.

Anyway… I hope you’re in a forgiving mood, because… tadah, it’s my birthday tomorrow! 😀 (That doesn’t leave you much choice now, does it? 😉 )

Birthdays. Hmmm.

I don’t know when it started, but somehow my birthdays have ceased to be major events for me. When I was younger, I would wait up till midnight just so I could be the first to greet myself. (Isn’t it amazing the crazy things that you think of when you’re young and have so much time on your hands?) Nowadays… well, let’s just say I’m looking forward to a really laid-back, no-pressure-to-go-anywhere-or-do-anything type of celebration. (Man, do I sound ancient or what!?)  I suspect this change in anticipation crept in unnoticed when I had my babies. Imagine: You plan their first birthday party and go all out as tradition dictates (even if I’ll bet my little finger they will remember nothing of this, their first huge birthday bash, as they grow up)… then you plan another 3rd birthday party because you reason they’re old enough to remember and still young enough to believe in the magician’s tricks… and then you plan the 7th birthday because you celebrate the child’s coming of age…(and if you are surrounded by the culture of my people, you will understand that birthday party equals the biggest bash where there are more adult guests than child guests and there’s enough food to feed an entire community). By the time you’ve done this for each of your five kids, you’re all birthday’ed out and all partied out that you don’t have the energy or the will to plan your own. 😀

But I plan to change that this year. In fact, I began today, on the eve of my birthday. The entire family went to see Ratatouille–we took up an entire row in the movie theatre! (Okay, so it’s a special movie theatre with just 100 seats, but still… isn’t it funny how you can fill an entire row with just your nuclear family?) We had the time of our lives, if you don’t count my 3 babies running back and forth (thank goodness there was just one other family in the theatre, given the early hour at which we attacked. Or we might have been attacked by that other family which had better-behaved kids. 😀 )

Should I admit to you now that this is the first movie I’ve seen in years decades? Seriously. As my husband and I settled into our seats in the midst of our kids, I whispered to him, “Can you believe this is the very first movie we’re seeing together in an actual movie house?” Oh yes, that’s the truth; I kid you not! And that’s why it was so exciting for me. New experiences are always exciting, aren’t they? Not that I’ve never been to a movie theatre, because I have… oh, maybe some 20 years ago? In those days, the floors were sticky with spilled soda and scattered popcorn so it really wasn’t so hard to choose to see a movie in the cool comfort of your own bedroom with the ability to press pause if you needed to take a wee-break in the middle of the movie’s climax and the ability to rewind in case anyone needed the answer to “What did he say? What did he say?” 😀 I was (and still am) pretty content with that set-up, but it’s always a refreshing change to step out and try something new, or at least something old-new.

So all this birthday talk should at least leave you with something fun, right? Here it is: I plan to hire these aliens for my upcoming kids’ birthdays… before they get discovered by Simon Cowell and their rates go up. 😀 Enjoy!