Happy Birthday, Boy#3

January 2 may be the worst day of the year to have a birthday.

On January 2, the whole world is tired of celebrating. We have just come through the official Best Day of the Year, followed by the run-up to Christmas, followed by Christmas, followed by the last gasp of festivity known as New Year's Eve, followed by the gaping stupor that is New Year's Day, and then we have "What? A birthday? Do we have any leftover cake we could put a candle in?"

Happy birthday, Boy#3!

In spite of the disservice done to him by making him the not-quite-New-Year's-baby of 1990, Three has grown up to be a wonderful young man. I know that because when he asked me to make some kind of special treat for the trombone section as it loads the bus for a nine-hour trip to a bowl game and I suggested sugar cookies, he did not recoil in horror.

I know! What was I thinking? I am the world's worst sugar cookie maker, but I never remember that until I have put six hours of stress and a full pound of butter into the World's Worst Sugar Cookies. I envisioned this batch as four dozen snarling purple PowerCats, the perfect pre-game chow for a major bowl game. Instead, well, they're kind of lavender and globby.

"What you do is tell your friends that I ordered them from the bakery," I told Three, "and that I am never, ever doing business with that store again. The nerve of them sending such a mess...."

He's a good kid, so he laughed.

I'm sure it was an oversight that the lavender globs were accidentally left on the kitchen island when Three packed his car and left this morning. Fortunately, he'd only been gone a few minutes so Husband was able to catch up with him at the first stop sign and the World's Worst Sugar Cookies made the trip after all.

You're a good sport, Three, and I hope your whole year is as terrific as you are.