Maaaaaaaaan. 😑 I gotta kid turning 18 this week, Wednesday. Willis ISD is out for the summer on May 21. (HELLS BELLS! Heck yeah, we’re out as soon as possible too!) My father’s birthday is today. (WE already called to sing Happy Birthday. 👍🏾) My brother is Thursday. My grandmother-in-law is Wednesday. One of our usual cousins was Friday. The list goes on and on with birthdays that coincide and overlap during the first week of May. May is so doggone stocked with birthdays, it used to signal SOMEthing to get fly for. Back in the days of yesteryear, the STAAR test, State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, was over by now. The school teachers were doing “fluff stuff” or boring STAAR retest drills. Shhhhoooooooot, my kids would be DRAGGING through the first week, high on cakes, soda pop, chips and midnight bedtimes, ALL courtesy of family birthday parties.
Ain’t NONE of that going on this May with quarantine, closings, yada yada yada. NONE of it. Dem kids (the students) get excited about calling to WISH people Happy Birthday. We call on speaker phone so errrrbody can hear, shout, sing, talk, ask questions. It’s actually become SUCH a thing, they can’t keep focus for fear of missing an opportunity to yap during Academy hours, hoping to kill time. MY father was first this week and we knocked that off before lunch. Dem kids (the students) laughed and giggled for the longest over their Poppi’s excitement and energy. 10AM, stores and campuses shut down, Poppi was out finishing his 5mile trek through the countryside and cracking jokes with others. WTF! Poppi out ALREADY, exercise finished and “good mood’ing” around his city? ✍🏾🙌🏾👏🏾👏🏾 What was THEIR excuse as kids, students or healthy individuals? *waits with arms crossed*
Our morning opened with neighborly love! This is NOT unusual for our block. Two weeks ago, the birthday calls, surprise sign, other stuff would have been considered distractions. These days, I welcome the shenanigans and organized off-task activities. It took our entire P.E. to decide where we should leave it next, pull it up and physically move it.
On another note: I ABSOLUTELY label this ANOTHER sign of the power of Gratitude and it recognizing da lil handicapped homie.
How we celebrated birthdays
We decided, as a family, to gon head celebrate all these birthdays despite the quarantine. Well, since I’m being honest, my wife kinda sorta punked us into it. We were all chillaxing, comfortable with another easy Saturday of INNER-family movies, cooking and jokes. SHE put a stop to it and held feet to the fire, including my soon-to-be 18-year old. We grilled on Sunday in honor of EVERYBODY birthday and called around to let folks know. Nope, not invite people over, just like called to say, “Yo! Happy early B-day. We grilling real meat and plant-based substitutes in YOUR name and wanted to let you know.” 😉😂😂😂😂😂 But for real, that’s exactly what we did. #Whatever 😛
The Sunday grilling turned out to be MY Who’s Cooking Dinner Tonight. We had enough leftovers to lunch AND dinner for Monday. Dem kids were happy about NOT cooking dinner when I assumed they’d be disappointed. Cool beans because TOMORROW, back on THEM.
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