I woke up the first time at 4:30am.

I fell back asleep at about 5:30am – only to wake up at 6:30am.

When I was still awake at 7:30am, I said fuck it – got up – and made myself coffee.

I am up way too early – but even more so – too early for my usual Sunday morning which usually finds me curled around SB in his bed – not even thinking about being awake for any longer it may take to go to the bathroom.

But today I wake up in my own bed – fighting for covers as both G and Maggie The Pitaroo try to take more than their share.  (I think Maggie is winning as usual.)  I wake to weird dreams that make me wonder “where the fuck did my subconscious come up with that?!”  I wake up knowing I don’t want to be awake – I want to be in bed wrapped around SB.

This weekend has become Indigo’s birthday extravaganza weekend.  She turns 13 today (in 1hr and 45 min if we are marking the time of her birth as her true birthday).  Ok, side note.  I find it kinda funny how no matter how old my kids get – I think of their birthdays also in terms of the exact moment they entered the world.  As a friend of mine who is about 15 years older than me once said, birth are the war stories women tell as you go through it once, you don’t forgot.

But anyway, this entire weekend has been birthday stuff for Indigo which is cool and all for Indigo – and is marking the occasion well.  But damn – after a busy week – missing both date night with G and date night with SB has fucked with my mood – fucked with my ability to recharge.  The trade offs of being a parent and polyamorous, I guess – a trade off that sometimes sucks as when the right thing for me as a Mom is not the right thing for me.

Don’t get me wrong – Friday night’s birthday party with friends which involved pizza and ice skating had some funny moments.  Indigo and her friends are entertaining.  She had 4 friend with her – the hyperactive, over-the-top crazy friend – the rich, know-it-all friend – the quiet yet silly friend – and the wise-beyond-her-years friend.  I don’t think you could put together a more diverse group of girls together in one group.  And DJ was in rare form being the older teenager yet showing she could still be goofy too.

But pizza ended with a trip to the mall (the mall is my personal hell as it is too busy and crazy for me to feel anything but stressed out) – and taking DJ shopping for a present for her sister’s birthday.  DJ cannot make a decision if her life depends on it.  We wandered around all over the place – she would be like “this is neat” – then be like “but I don’t know – I hate buying presents because I’m worried I’ll get it wrong.”  At one point, I tried to explain to her how most people approach finding gifts for people.  I got the annoyed teenager look.  In a last ditch effort before I threw up my hands to tell her to find it herself because I’m sitting down and watching them skate, I dragged her into a bookstore.  Indigo loves to cook and bake, and as we walked by the “new book” area, DJ was like “oh, her favorite cooking show person put out a new cookbook”.  That finally led her to the gift she knew Indigo would love.  And all I wanted to do was should my thanks to the gods new and old and the spaghetti monster and whatever else that I could finally stop wandering the mall with a whiny teenager.

Except I got to sit with her and listen to her whine about how tired she was.  Then got harassed by a cleaning person who was sweeping the area, came over near us, and yelled “excuse me!” at us as we were sitting in the chairs the mall puts around the skating rink.  “Is that your way of asking us to move?” I was a bit annoyed.  “Obviously” was his response.  “Well clearly it wasn’t obvious if I’m asking.”  And we got up and moved.

Everyone got home late because the mall closes at 9, but the ice rink closes at 10.  Parents picking up kids who are ice skating cannot come in to get them.

Yesterday or day 2 of the birthday extravaganza was taking Indigo to a book reading and signing for Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess.  The reading started at 4pm, but after seeing and reading about the Seattle signing – I decided we better get there early.  We got there at 2pm – and found ourselves one of 40 people already there.  By 2:30pm, they were already adding more chairs.  By 3pm, they announced they expected to be at capacity by 3:30pm – so if anyone has friends wandering the store, they need to contact them to get to the 4th floor before then else they won’t be able to attend.  At 3:25pm, they closed the doors.  It was nuts!

Jenny was amazing.  She came up – announced her xanax had not kicked in yet, and she didn’t take her ADD meds – so the reading was going to be a fun, rambling one.  She read two great chapters from the book – and Indigo was grinning the whole time.  They gave people signing tickets starting about 2:30 because they only wanted to call up 10 groups at a time to get in line.  I figured we would be in the 4th or 5th group which was awesome still – but meant more time in the room which had become a fucking sauna that smelled of sweat, old lady perfume, and patchouli.  They called the number range for the first group – I looked at our ticket to see what that meant for us.  Score! We were in the second group!  Thank all the deities!  Our number got called to get in line – and of course, we got in line behind the two ladies who had 8 things for her to sign between the two of them.  And before them was another group with about 6 things for her to sign.  I was having flashbacks to discussions I would have with G before going to comicons.  “Don’t take every fucking book that person ever did to have them sign. That’s just mean – not only for the person who just got the stack of 50 comics to sign but also to the guy behind you.”  Plus I would think of myself – the person who agreed to go with him (because he wasn’t going to spend a lot of time there) and standing with him as these are being signed made me want to apologize to the artist / writer /creator who was signing it.  “I’m sorry,” I imagined saying, “he’s just a bit obsessive about making sure whichever comic of yours he pulls out is signed.”

It was finally my turn – and Indigo was giddy.  She didn’t quite know what to say, so I explained that her birthday was tomorrow and this was one of the things she wanted to do to celebrate – to see her and meet her and get her book signed.  Jenny was sweet and thankfully did not judge me.  I mean, during her virtual book release party, she explained her daughter was in another part of the house since there would be a lot of cussing happening.  And what did I do? I brought my daughter to a signing because she loved her first book which she heard during a family trip when she was 10.  And the word fuck was in there a lot too.  Anyway, after a weird issue with my phone during which (stupid) suggestions were being shouted from those around us – I finally got a photo of her with my phone.  Teach me to forego a real camera.

We got home at about 6pm – I started making her birthday cake (german chocolate per her request) – and drinking.  Being in that situation at the bookstore for that long in the middle of a whole bunch of people is NOT my idea of a good time.  I felt like I walked out of their dazed.  So yay alcohol!

Anyway, I made her cake from scratch which is awesome but there were some technical difficulties during assembling.  The layers were too thin (we cut the two layers in half to have four because we needed 3) – and then it started to fall apart.  I finally got it together – frosted the fuck out of it to try to cover all of the issues – and tossed it in the fridge hoping the cold would make it all hold together.  I would blame the alcohol for this – but G and DJ were also helping at this time – so I did not act alone.

Oh and while the cake was baking, they made me watch Big Hero 6 which is a great movie but was also incredibly sad in terms of how they choose to make the story unfold.  DJ had warned me because she found herself teary eyed a few times when watching it – so I had been avoiding watching it for that reason.  Damn the family for making me watch it.

Well, I get I should get on with my day.  My in-laws arrive soon to take Indigo to lunch for her birthday.  Then tonight we are going somewhere for her birthday.  I can’t recall.  Then the week starts.

I’m ready for it to be done……sigh….