Anna Skamarakas

Today is the 12th year in a row we have celebrated Jim’s 29th birthday.  I keep waiting for him to catch up to me in age, but at this point in time, I’m just hoping to die soon enough that people don’t think I’ve married someone’s great grandson when I tell them how old I am and how old my husband is.  Today also illustrates one of the worst parts of Jim’s current assignment.  He’s not home for his birthday.  Not that if he was on a more local assignment being home was a guaranteed thing, but it would have been nice for the kids to be able to wake up and see him and wish him happy birthday.  At least they were all together when we called him this morning.  Of course, it was 6 AM his time, so I don’t know how much he appreciated the birthday wishes, but they wanted him to know they were thinking of him.

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I usually listen to reruns of Howard Stern on my way home from dropping Jim off at the airport, but this past week, they had strippers on, which wasn’t too entertaining.  So I flipped on the radio station that I listen to as I was pulling away from the gate.  This song was playing…

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I turned 43 GULP on Sunday, and after the stress of making sure Brighid’s party was perfect, I was glad to have a low key day planned.  Jim had given us a subscription to the theatre for Christmas, and as luck would have it, we had tickets to see Man of La Mancha on Saturday night.  My mom offered to do a sleep over with Eilis and Granuaile, so Jim and Brighid and I went to the show.  I had a lot of running to do on Saturday, but managed a shower and putting on decent clothes to go out.  After the show, we came back to the diner to grab something to eat.  Jim’s waitress was there - the same girl that waits on us every Thursday night.  Brighid got to see first hand how she pampers Jim - bringing him his big glass of water right away, already knowing what he is ordering, having his rice pudding packed to go. 

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And I think it was a big success   It looked like everyone had fun, and even though the party officially ended at midnight, we still had a hanger on or two until almost 12:30.  The kids were all talking about it at school on Monday, so there was buzz over the weekend, and I think things went great.

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We seem to be a day late and a dollar short on the home selling thing.  After a nice trip down to FL and official word of a transfer for Jim, we put our house up for sale.  The only place I’ll be moving at this rate though is  to a padded cell.

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I am not by any stretch a gourmet.  I am not great in the kitchen, and the things I know how to make are simple things, or things that my mother and Grandmom Fee or Grandmom Bilbrough made for years.  As she gets older, I think my mother does more experimenting in the kitchen than I do.  But having three kids, all with different palates, can make adventurous cooking a dangerous - and wasteful - thing.

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Post from April, 2007  

Well we all know that sometimes even the best laid plans go awry, so when I wait until the last minute, can’t figure out what to do, and put way less effort into a party than I should have, I should expect stuff to go wrong.  Stuff did, but it worked out okay in the end.

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Well, my 40something birthday is coming up in another 12 days, and my daughter’s Sweet 16 party is coming up in just 3 days.  Conveniently, my power cord for my digital disaster of a camera has gone missing, and apparently, they no longer stock them in stores.  It would cost $70 to buy one from Sony directly, so Jim thought it would be better to just replace the camera.

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