Forty-Five

Sometimes I think, wouldn't it be nice to invite a bunch of people I really love over to my house. Maybe once the garden is in...

...and the osteopermums have had a chance to recover from Lucy biting their heads off...

...and the lone remaining bellflower had just bloomed.

Collette would come over early and help me juice a hundred lemons and limes and we would play music and sing along.

Maybe I would mix some awesome newer friends in with the awesome older friends, and not worry at all that they wouldn't mix well, because everyone knows that awesome goes with awesome awesomely well.

And even though it rained all the rain there ever was the day before and I really had doubts about whether the promised sunshine would show up, it would show up...

...but the temperature would be cool enough for me, and warm enough so that I wasn't sitting in my back yard alone.

And maybe there would be a cute little baby-type person who would toddle around reading us an ABC book and sitting down periodically to dust off her feet. 

And of course she would be beautiful, because, duh, look at her mom. 

(*Remembers that Cynthia brought trifle and there is still some in the fridge. Leaves for a while*)

And my neighbours wouldn't have to call the police on us for being too loud, because...(also, some people went next door with Paul to smoke cigars and look at his Mustang convertible, which was cool because I felt like my birthday party had excursions).

And there would be purple martinis, because purple. And martinis.

And cupcakes. 

And the cutest cupcake-labeler ever.

And the purple martinis would make Pam's head go from this position...

...to this one. 

And Collette and I would test out whether our magical ability to always take a good picture together when we're tipsy had a drink limit. 

And hopefully there would be inappropriate pictures taken at some point, from which I will remove any identifying features to protect the guilty. 

And maybe at some point there would be a photo that looks like it was taken by the bodiless head in the cooler from the end of Dawn of the Dead, which would be intriguing, because, no hands!

Which is to say, although I didn't have everyone I wanted in my back yard, due to stupid geography and sick children and monstrously unfair biking accidents (it's fine, he's patched up and home with a stockpile of very good painkillers), and the end came way too soon, I pretty much got everything I wanted for my birthday.