Monday, May 21, 2007

Parties and Family

Coming tomorrow: Jan tagged me with a meme. So, I need to figure out what a meme is, and think of 8 random things.

And figure out the new postal rates for the 4 kinds of First Class mail (which seems a bit oxymoron-ish to me). I've got a lot of books listed on Half.com and Amazon.com, and some of them may get traded at the local used book store.

On to the weekend:

We had a busy weekend. We went down to my parents' on Friday, for my dad's retirement dinner (lunch, actually). He's retiring after 25 years as the bus mechanic & transportation director at the school district that I graduated from, and I think he's pretty happy to be leaving. The school does a catered lunch every year for the retirees, and family is invited, so we attended. The food was good, the superintendent said some mildly-nice things about Dad, and I got to see the few teachers that are still around who remember me (three, I think - my fifth-grade teacher is still teaching, my high school English/Spanish teacher retired this year, and my high school government/geography teacher is teaching part time).

Mom made a scrapbook for Dad, and she's been working on it for six months. She was sneaky, so it was a surprise, and Dad really liked it. So did everyone who got to see it at the retirement, too. She had paper school bus outlines that she sent to all his old bus drivers, former principals, and people like that, and they all wrote something on the bus and sent it back. He got a nice letter from one of the board members that hired him, one of the early superintendents, and a really complimentary letter from one of the Highway Patrol officers who is in charge of the annual bus inspections.

Dad'll be working for a while after his retirement - he can put in 550 hours without pension issues, and they haven't hired a replacement for him yet. They hired one guy, but he washed out - my sister called him "a complete and utter DORK" and she wasn't exaggerating. So, since Dad's the head, and only, mechanic, the school board needs to get in gear and get a replacement, or they'll be waaaaaay up a creek.

Anywho. We also had a birthday party for El Burrito while we were there. That would be Party #1; he's also having Party #2 at his other grandma's next weekend, and a little party with just us this week. He had a very good party. My grandparents (his only living great-grands) came, which surprised me a bit. They got his name very wrong on his card, though.(*) Two of my aunts and one uncle came, two other aunts sent gifts, and one of the neighbors came as well. El Burrito came home with a box full of gifts, six new outfits, and got to eat cake and ice cream (tiny amounts, because I'm trying not to encourage his sweet tooth). He was a paper-shredding fiend at Christmas, but he wasn't interested in paper yesterday. His first gift was a little toy car, and he was totally fascinated with it in spite of the opportunities to tear paper.

And it's sad, but I'm a teeny bit jealous of the kid, because no one's had a birthday party of any sort for me since the one in college. And that was probably not my best birthday party ever. DH takes me out for dinner, and there's usually a birthday dinner at his parents' one weekend, but it's not quite the same. His mom has a birthday dinner for everyone, kids or adults. Nothing big, no balloons or anything, just dinner and cake, and the birthday person chooses the food. But, my birthday is the same week as at least one other person, and mother-in-law sees him more often so he usually picks the food. And, sadly, my birthday has flown under the radar at least twice in the 7 years we've been dating/married.

(*) My grandparents have never spent a lot of time with us. They had six kids, and of those, my parents were at the bottom of their list, because they didn't get to choose who Mom married. (They apparently had a lot of input about some of my other uncles-in-law, although their choices weren't the best - one divorce, one almost-divorce, out of 6.) They were - and are - pretty blatant with the favoritism, although they deny it exists, and even though they only live 12 miles away, I think my brother was about ten before they came to our house. They've bought cars for a couple of my cousins, taken at least one of them to DisneyWorld/Land, and loaned/given more money to various cousins. They babysit (at age 80+, with health problems) for a few of my cousins' kids, because Grandma thought $90/week was too much to pay an every-day babysitter.

I was really shocked when they came to the hospital to see El Burrito, and even more shocked that they've been here to the house twice since then. They come to the hospital here pretty regularly, stop at the mall that's less than half a mile from here, and we never find out until much later. Except for the day that I ran into them at the mall, that is. I'm not shocked that they still can't spell my name, because they get close, and there are about 18 ways to spell it. The name on El Burrito's birthday card, though, was so far off that it wasn't funny.

2 comments:

wrnglrjan said...

My husband's mother (who has only two grandchildren) still can't get the Little Dude's name right. *sigh*

When is El Burrito's actual birthday? And when is yours?

Christi said...

El Burrito's birthday was yesterday, actually. He got to open the presents we bought him (from that Amazon sale a month or so ago). Tomorrow we go to Sears for pictures, and probably dinner out afterwards.

I'm pretty much not bothered that my grandma can't spell my name right, because lord knows there are way too many ways to spell it. But honestly, the name on El Burrito's card was not even really in the ballpark. It rhymes at the end, but that's it. At least they came to the party, though.