I’m tired.

Today was my daughter’s 7th birthday party.  My husband (God bless him) took our four kids to church by himself so I could stay home and take care of last minute party details.

As soon as they left, I embarked on two hours of completely non-party related activities, including mopping my boys’ bathroom floor (absolutely disgusting), cleaning out the litterbox (also disgusting) and gathering dirty dishes and glasses from the boys’ room.  I put away laundry, made a bed, swept up cat-fur tumbleweeds, did a couple loads of laundry, loaded the dishwasher (with all the dishes I found in the boys’ room), scurried here and there moving things to their rightful locations.

Finally, I showered and rushed off to buy ice and balloons–and I returned to Marshall’s to request that they please remove the security tag that they failed to remove from my daughter’s new swimsuit the other day.

I returned home with enough time to load up the Costco cake and an armful of beach towels and a carload of kids and a cooler and the matches and three push-pins and birthday candles and my camera with a freshly charged battery.

We arrived at the pool about three minutes before the party started.

Yikes.

However, and most importantly, the sun shone!  Summer returned.  And guests arrived.

Whenever we celebrate her birthday at the pool, I remember the day she was born.

I was due on September 5th and expected she’d arrive a week after her due date, simply because my son arrived nine days past his due date.  Plus, school started on September 3 and I wanted the kids to be settled before the baby arrived.  I thought September 10 would be perfect.

In 2002, on September 2, which happened to be Labor Day, I went into labor.  However, I did not believe that contractions five minutes apart was labor.  I noticed those contractions by lunch time.  So I fed the kids (frozen pizza) and told my husband that I just wanted to rest and I’d join him and the kids at the pool later in the afternoon.

They went to the pool and I ran bathwater.  It is said that a bath will stop false labor, you know, and I was confident that I could get those pesky contractions to stop.  Before the bath, I called my midwife just to let her know that I was having contractions but that I was sure they’d stop.

After half an hour in the bath, I realized my contractions weren’t stopping.

I got out of the tub and began to time them.  They were two minutes apart.

Huh.  I wondered to myself if the distance between contractions mattered more or less than the length of the contractions themselves.  I pulled a pregnancy book from the shelf to look up that information and sat on my birthing ball to bounce awhile.  That’s supposed to help with pain.

Between contractions, I began to cry.  I called the midwife back and left a message.  When she returned my call, I answered, “Hello?  Just a minute.”  Then I put down the phone and moaned my way through a contraction.

She told me she’d come and check me.

I expected that the contractions would stop.  If they didn’t stop, I figured I’d be laboring for a day or two because I labored for forty-three hours with my son.

While I waited for my midwife to drive the forty-five minutes from her house to mine, I decided to tidy up.  I started upstairs with my twins’ room–I made the bed, vacuumed, picked up toys.  Every two minutes I had to stop, curl up and breathe through contractions.  Downstairs, I vacuumed and put things away . . . stopping every two minutes to hug the coffee table or kitchen counter and breathe through a contraction.  I had intended to wash the lunch dishes but by the time I got to the kitchen sink, I realized that would be impossible.  I filled up a water-bottle with water and ice and went upstairs.

By the time the midwife arrived, I had decided not to have a baby.  When contractions came, I threw myself to the ground and vocalized–which is a fancy way of saying I yelled.

I was utterly unprepared.  My birthing tub was dry.  I hadn’t even begun to fill it.  I hadn’t called any of my labor support people.  My husband was still at the pool with my kids.  But the midwife told me I was five centimeters dilated and that I was very definitely going to have a baby.

Despite this convincing evidence, I telephoned my labor support people, my mom and my sister (who was to take pictures) and told them to take their time.  I knew I’d labor for days–maybe even weeks–and didn’t want everyone sitting around waiting on me.

Two hours after the midwife arrived, my daughter arrived, all 8 pounds, 8 ounces of her.  My husband missed the birth entirely. (He came in about 10 minutes after her birth.)  My friends, my labor support people–everyone but my mom and sister–missed the entire event.

She was born just before  7 p.m., about six hours after I first noticed I was in labor, even though I denied I was in labor for four of those six hours.

So, as a baby who was born underwater on Labor Day, it’s only fitting that we celebrate her birthday every year at the pool, that same pool where her father saw a rainbow just after she was born.

Happy birthday, Baby Girl.  I will never think of Labor Day the same again.

I used to play the piano to relax and express myself.  Then I had kids.  Now I just scream and hole up in my room under the comforter I bought in North Carolina during one college summer.

I cannot tolerate macaroni and cheese or any other creamy pasta dishes.  The texture is just wrong.

I have no idea what happens to the time after midnight.  I look up at the clock and suddenly it’s 1:30 a.m. and I have no idea.  What have I been doing?

I wear socks and slippers inside my house year round.  Do you like me less now that you know that?

I would rather sleep in than go to a garage sale.  And I love garage sales.

My most recent bargain came from a thrift store.  I found one of those giant scrapbooking suitcase things, the one that costs fifty or a hundred dollars.  It cost me $7.00.  I guess it was relinquished because the handle is broken.  I figured out an alternative. Yes.  I “scrapbook.”  Go ahead, judge me.

I love to watch Jeff Lewis (“Flipping Out”) and all the “Real Housewives” (who aren’t really housewives) and Craig Ferguson.  And I really loved “NY Prep.”

My hair is driving me crazy.

A grayish sock has been hanging on my fireplace for . . . um, a long time.  I never notice it during daylight hours.

My neighbors just moved.  I never even met them.  I think they were military.  I feel kind of bad that I never met them.

I honestly cannot believe I thought I was busy in college.  I worked only sporadically, had no husband, no children and all I had to do was go to class and study.  Seriously.  That looks like an actual vacation now.  I’d pay money to do that.  Wait!  I did pay money to do that!

Now that my daughter’s birthday is coming up (the day before school–though the party is this Sunday) I remember why I wanted to give birth to her on September 10th, five days past my due date.  September 2 is a pretty inconvenient birthdate.  For moms, anyway.

I love magazines but don’t have time to read them.  So they stack up into unsteady piles.

I am in between novels which is a lot like being in a sailboat without wind or oars.  Not that I’ve been in a sailboat without wind or oars.  I would like to go sailing, however.

I would really like to be stranded in Tahiti.

We didn’t get up to Mt. Rainier and I can’t figure out how we can still go before snow falls.  I’m bummed about that.

I have a writing assignment due on September 1.  I haven’t yet started said writing assignment.  I’m a ‘do the next thing’ kind of girl and the assignment hasn’t floated to the top of the list yet.  But it’s pretty close.  Top of the list?  Prepare for Sunday’s birthday party.  And try not to die from the common cold.

I’ve been through almost half a box of the tissues I bought to send to the school.  It’s amazing how many school supplies we buy these days.

Today I yelled at my kids to stop yelling.  Which is kind of dumb.  I heard how dumb it was even while I was projecting my voice to out-shout them.

Now I am going to bed.  I hope I don’t wake up my sleeping husband.  Also?  I hope I fall immediately to sleep.  The common cold has been making sleep difficult this week.

I haven’t cooked a decent dinner all week.  I ought to be fired.

Fire me.

Please.

I have lived a pretty careful life.  As long as I can remember, I have tried to do the right thing.  I have never been interested in exploring life outside the boundaries.  I don’t see anything wrong with coloring in the lines.

While my peers were drinking and dancing (both sins in the church of my youth), I was practicing sonatas on the piano.  While other girls were sneaking out of their bedrooms to meet bad boys, I was babysitting.  While some teenagers rebelled by sticking needles into their arms, my dad caught me wearing mascara once when I performed in a trio at the county fair.

I was a good girl.  I wanted to be  good girl.  I wanted to get all the answers right, no matter what test I was taking.  I listened to all the directions.  I read the manuals.

This strategy has worked well for me.  I have no skeletons in my closet, no scars or broken bones, no incriminating photographs.  I haven’t thrown up in anyone’s car, nor have I forgotten my underpants in anyone’s living room.

As it turns out, you can’t stop the tide.  While you are tending to the moats and shaping the sandcastles of your life, waves slip in and then crash over and sometimes, wash away everything you’ve built.

If I were keeping score, I would find this incredibly unfair.  I have made good choices and yet, bad things have happened.  I have acted appropriately and all hell has broken loose.  I have done the right thing and been rewarded with the wrong results.  Tidal waves have washed out the entire shoreline of my life.

Is there a lesson to learn?  (I am the kind of girl who wants to learn the lessons.)

Not really.  Life isn’t as simple as taking a multiple choice test.  Sometimes I don’t even know the questions, let alone the answers.

Crazy things happen, even if you alphabetize your spices.

All you can do is swim parallel to the shore so the riptide doesn’t sweep you out to sea.  And wear a really big life jacket.  Sooner or later the sea will spit you back onto the shore.

My daughter’s big goal in life is to climb Mt. Everest.  Then she plans to slide back down the mountain on the seat of her pants. She told me so tonight.

She also plans to have at least four babies.  She already has a place for them in her room, but she is very concerned about the fact that she does not yet have a carseat for them.  She has started to save her toys for her babies to use someday.

Yesterday at the shoe store she picked out some very sparkly pink Sketcher sneakers.  She tried to convince me to buy some metallic gold sparkly Chuck Taylors for myself.  I resisted.  She insisted.  I did not purchase them but she laughed and laughed as she pushed the box into my hands.  I might go back and buy them just to hear her laugh some more.  I said, “What would I wear gold sparkly shoes with?” and she said, “Buy a sparkly dress!”

I took her to Wild Waves tonight but it closed at 7 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. so we were there only an hour.  Still, she glided under the water of the activity pool, flung herself from the high rock into the deep water, floated around the lazy river ride, jumped over waves.  Then on the way out, she trailed behind me.  As I approached the gate, I turned to make sure she was with me and she wasn’t.  Then I heard wailing ten feet away . . . she had “lost” me when she’d gotten distracted by someone else.  I think her biggest fear is that she will lose me–even though I have promised repeatedly that I will never leave her.

On the way home, she asked if I knew where Great-Grandma is buried.  I recently found out, so I told her I do.  Then she said she’d like to go sometime.  She told me she wants to buy flowers for the grave.

And then she chattered the whole way home until I begged her to stop talking for just a little while.  She crowds all the thoughts from my heads with all the thoughts from her head.

I hope she always wants to shop with me and talk to me until I am weary of her voice.  I hope she always laughs at my jokes.  And I hope she understands that I will never, ever, ever lose her even if she wanders away from me.

Last Friday, I stopped by a garage sale with my two youngest kids.  We came upon a bunk bed, a white metal bunk bed, and my daughter began to beg for that bunk bed.  I said, “We don’t need a bunk bed.  I’m not buying a bunk bed.”

And yet, a few hours later, it occurred to me that I should have bought the bunk bed because then I could move my daughter’s bed to my son’s room and my son’s bed to my other son’s room and then, voila!  The teenager who has been sleeping on the floor because he doesn’t like his other sleeping options (an Ikea chair that converts into a bed OR the top bunk of the bunk bed in his room) would have an actual bed upon which to slumber.

I know.  It’s confusing.  No time to explain!

So I went back to the garage sale and purchased the bunk bed.  Then I spent the next hour carting the bed home (one piece at a time in the back of my mini-van.)

That set me up for a lovely Saturday full of cleaning so that we could shift the universe and place each bed in its new location.

Let me just say that we all have too much stuff.  And so I had to move lots of stuff so we could move the beds.

Also?  I had to use tools to take apart the bunk bed to get it up the stairs.  I did so without swearing, which is good since my kids were helping me.  And we only put a smallish scrape on the wall.

The project wasn’t complete until Sunday.  And I still haven’t quite put the finishing touches on everything.

Why I create this sort of work for myself is beyond comprehension.

Next up?  Planning a birthday party in ten days and making the dreaded phone calls to invite the party guests since I don’t have addresses for everyone.  I know.  I should have already invited everyone but where did the time go?  I’ll tell you.  I squandered it moving beds from room to room, that’s where.

My head hurts.

I’ve been thinking about friends lately and wondering if I have any.  If someone threw me a surprise party (please, don’t you dare), would anyone come?  If I died, would the church be empty during my funeral?  If I had to deal with a tragedy and had to call someone, who would I call?  Who would call me?  Would anyone call me?

I have a lot of acquaintances.  I’ve managed to meet people from one coast to the other and have a lot of folks on my Christmas card list.  I’m in touch with people I’ve known since elementary school and have connected with college classmates.  I know people.  People know me.  I have Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

But I have this nagging feeling that I am out of the loop, as if everyone else is making plans to do things that don’t involve me.  Delusional?  Just the facts?  I imagine the truth is somewhere between the two.

I just think everyone is having more fun than me.  I have turned into a self-centered adolescent with age spots and a sprinkling of gray hair at my temples.  I’m feeling sorry for myself and wondering what, exactly, is wrong with me.  (Please, that’s a rhetorical question.  No answers necessary.)

What is wrong with me?

When my friends went on family trips, my family broke apart.

While everyone else was partying, I was in the school library.

When my fellow brides were getting pregnant, I was busy being infertile.

When my babies were babies, I was the oldest mom in the church nursery.

When my college friends’ children were going off to college, my youngest was starting kindergarten.

I am always out of sync, somehow.  I’m too old.  I’m too fat.  I’m too quiet.  I’m too busy.  I’m too serious.  I’m too cynical.  (My hair is driving me crazy.)  I’m too religious, not religious enough, too introverted, not introverted enough, too ambitious, not ambitious enough.  I like to be alone but I’m so lonely.

I’ve had friends in the past, friends who listened to my stories, who confided in me, who telephoned to chat while we both stood at our kitchen sinks washing dishes and sharing our random thoughts.  I miss that.

I can’t seem to get past the acquaintance stage anymore.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with me.

All I know is that if I had to round up enough people for a party, I couldn’t do it.

Not that I even like parties, but still.  It’s the idea.  If I wanted to celebrate, who would celebrate with me?  If I were to mourn, who would mourn with me?

I know that when I’m feeling blue like this, when I feel alone, the solution is to reach out, to find someone else’s need and meet it.  To be a friend to someone else.  I know.  I do.

But I kind of wish I were just born an extrovert, one of those who seems to be a human magnet for other people.  Can that be learned?  I need to learn.

I tell myself that it’s the stage of life I’m in . . . and I try not to notice that other people in this stage of life have plans and people and places to go.  Who has time, anyway, when you have four kids, a full-time job, a full-time husband (ha), three cats, a half-finished novel, ivy which will not stop creeping and laundry which does not wash itself?

Well.  If I threw a party, would you come?  If Idied, would you cry?  If I stopped whining, would you cheer?  (Don’t answer.)

I know I’m silly.  I’ll likely regret this tomorrow, but maybe now that I’ve said it, I can stop obsessing and carry on.  Cheer up.  Things could be worse.  (And then I cheered up and things got worse.  Ha ha.)

* * *

(I owe emails to people.  That proves I have friends and if they read this, they’ll wonder if they don’t count somehow . . . but, of course, I’m not talking about them . . . just about the people in my immediate orbit, the ones who I would call if I were to throw a party, not that I ever throw parties, the ones who don’t exist here, not on a deep, intimate level anyway . . . which I’m sure is my fault because I am so guarded.  I’m sure that’s it.)

Did you see the episode of “Man vs. Food” recently that featured Red Mill Burgers in Seattle? (Here’s a blog post about the original filming.)  Well, my kids saw it–months ago–and then again recently. (I saw it last week.)

Awhile back we decided to find the place and eat there on a Sunday after church.  I used my handy iPhone to look it up, find the location and get directions.  Unfortunately, my iPhone did not tell me the following crucial information:

1)  Red Mill Burgers only takes cash and checks. No debit cards.

2)  Red Mill Burgers on 67th Street is small and on a Sunday afternoon, extremely crowded. (In other words, you will eat your burgers in your mini-van unless you have better luck than we did.)

3)  Red Mill Burgers is a take-out kind of place, not a sit-down with silverware while servers bring you food kind of place, so you stand in a line at a single cash register, place your order, hand over a lot of cash (for a burger place–for instance, this week it cost me nearly $60 for five of us to eat), and then you stand along the wall to wait with eight other people  for them to call your name.

The first time we ate at Red Mill, I had only $40 cash–which normally is plenty of cash to pay for our usual Sunday lunch at Dick’s Drive-In.  I expected them to accept debit cards.  That day, I bought plain burgers and we shared orders of onion rings and no one got a drink.  Very unsatisfying.

So, last week, I took the kids to the zoo and then to Red Mill Burgers–on a Wednesday afternoon at about 2 p.m.  It was still pretty busy, but we were able to snag two tall tables and five stools and eat inside.  I ordered the burger I saw on the episode (bleu cheese and bacon) and it was really a fine burger, one of the best burgers I’ve ever had.  (Proclaimed to be “one of the 20 hamburgers you must eat before you die.” in Oprah Magazine, they say.)  And the onion rings are amazing. One of my teenagers was unable to finish his burger.  UNABLE TO FINISH.  That’s a big burger.

I realized, after the fact, that dining with four children in a very crowded restaurant while perched on a bar stool, balancing a purse on your lap and trying not to drip ketchup on your shirt is not the best way to experience really good food.  How can you enjoy your hamburger if you are reminding your daughter to not slide to the floor?  And I had to keep saying, “Watch out!  You’re going to hurt your forehead if you keep doing that.” Don’t ask.  I don’t know.

So, if you go to Red Mill Burgers, here are my tips:

1)  Do not take a 6 and a half year old dining companion.

2)  Take a lot of cash.  More than you think necessary.

3)  Go on a weekday afternoon.

4)  Do not put a roast in the Crock-Pot for dinner on a day you eat Red Mill burgers in the afternoon.  No one will be hungry for dinner.

5)  Also?  Parking can be tricky.

Other than that, go for it.  I don’t see how you could possibly regret it.  Unless you’re a vegan or very frugal.  Or allergic to bacon.

I didn’t think I was judgmental.  I just thought I was right.

Motherhood has cured me of a lot of that.  Before I had kids, I had a lot of certainties about parenting.  I was a much better mother before I actually had kids, as a matter of fact.  Turns out that kids haven’t read the manual, either, and don’t always do what the experts say they will do.  (Also?  Nothing like having children to hold up a gigantic magnifying glass to highlight your imperfections.)

But even beyond motherhood, just walking through life with open eyes and ears has made me realize how judgmental I am.  Was.  Am trying not to be.

When I was a teenager, “secular” music (that is, music that was not religious or “sacred”) was a sin.  We good Christian girls did not listen to it, nor did we hang out with people who did.  (I made an exception for Olivia Newton-John.  The music, not the person.  Why am I confessing this?)  But then I met a really nice guy at Taco Time where I worked–I can’t remember his name–but he was a big Motley Crue fan.  Maybe his name was Steve.  We laughed a lot and I realized that he–a heavy metal fan–was just a person like me.  Not scary, but funny.  And kind and a good worker.

When I’m driving, a slow driver or a weaving car will cause me to shout, “YOU IDIOT!”  (I know.)  My daughter will say, “Mom, just because it’s slow doesn’t mean it’s an idiot.”  She’s right, of course.  I judge because I cannot speed.  Dumb and unfair and a terrible example to my kids.  And what if that person ends up at the same place I’m going and we look into each other’s eyes and I realize what a jerk I am?

I tend to think that my preferences should be dictates.  Ask my long-suffering husband who likes to point out that I have about a million rules for living.  For example, no tattoos allowed unless you are a military man or a rock star.  And then I think of sweet friends who have tattoos and who am I to judge?  I am so quick to dismiss trends and ideas and people who don’t fit into my tidy little world view.  And how offensive am I?  Judging someone for something that ultimately doesn’t matter at all?

I used to shrink back when someone different entered my orbit.  How could we coexist with such different ideas about the world?  And then, I’d catch a glimpse into that other life and discover the similarities beyond the walls.

Of course, I have definite ideas of things.  I will never get a tattoo.  I won’t have my nose pierced or dye my hair purple.  I have no interest in rap music or understanding Kurt Cobain’s lyrics.  I intend to stay married until I die to the same man (lucky guy).  It’s unlikely that I will ever drink alcohol.  I have no plans to start cursing (much) and I will never, ever find the movie “Borat” funny.  I’d like all boys to wear their hair short and all girls not to call boys on the phone.  In my world, no one has sex outside of marriage and teenagers don’t use the ‘f-word’ on their Facebook pages.

I try to balance on this teeter-totter of ideas and peculiarities and particularities.  I have every right to sort through issues and trivial matters and decide what I think.  We all do.  But I find that I like people who aren’t on my teeter-totter at all, people who free-wheel through life with green mohawks and those weird discs in their earlobes and an interest in remote African politics.  Hey, it takes all kinds!  Who am I to judge?  I like those people, even liberals and people who think abortion is a valid choice and people who like to watch Star Trek.  (Most of them, anyway.  Some of them just get on my nerves and there’s nothing I can really do about that.  That’s the truth.  I never claimed to be perfect.)

I totally believe in absolute right and wrong.  Some things are always right.  Some things are always wrong.  But there is an ocean floating between those two island and that’s where most of us bob.  At least that’s what I think tonight.

Answer:  I have absolutely no idea.  (Question:  Why are you writing about this tonight?)