I'm Cleopatra!

This has been my birthday weekend.  
In fact, today is actually my birthday. 

If you've been paying attention,  you know my birthdays are kind of hit or miss.  You can read about some of them here. 

Today is family time and dinner with a possible pumpkin pie.  

Yesterday wound up more exciting than I thought it was going to be.  

My friend and I had been trying and failing to see this particular exhibit at one of the bazillion museums around where we live.  

An Egyptian exhibit, I was assuming a cover price meant the museum would be... bigger.  It was still a nice place.  
...And I still prefer the giant one I volunteered with for a while.  It's free and there is a carousel.

But this one was neat and a bunch of friends joined! 

...I was trying to take a picture of the Christian Science window because I was entertained by the knowledge that they can apparently create zombies by waking the dead.  

Instead, I got a nice shot of bird shit.  This poor man's car was attacked by birds.  Some of the poop is speckled with blood.  Obviously a dying bird. 

Hey, maybe they brought the bird back and it's a zombie, shitting bird?  

I took notes throughout the visit via sketchbook, so I'm going to post them here and do my best to decipher them for you.

I love these.  The imagery, the meaning, the use even when they are "dummy" jars...  

I told my knight that when I die, I want this to occur.  
He misheard and seemed to assume I was going to kill him sometime soon and steal his organs.  

Next up was a mummified dog:

I wondered if it had been left to die before mummification, or if the dog was killed just to be buried with the master.  

Because my brain had already concocted a story involving a mummy coming back via curse and just wanting to find a better replacement limb for an old fake one, I added that perhaps he was also looking to raise his dog from the dead.  

...
I want this table.  
It looks better than I drew it (which goes for everything, really) but it's awesome and I shall make a replica and it shall be mine.  ...Yes.

My knight and I wandered into a little room with a television just as lights went on beyond a glass wall.  I felt as though we were seeing what was meant to be unseen, as it seemed to be a window into the storage area of the museum.  

...Just...  Walls and shelves of chairs, couches and pianos, as far as the eye can see. 

Eventually we wandered to other areas of the museum.  

They aren't even sure who made it. 
...
Chickens. 


*ahem* 

Well done marble sculptures are amazing with how an artist can capture fabric, hair, and even flesh in ways that aren't even easy enough to paint.  

I was particularly intrigued by a few set into little alcoves in the walls going up the stairs.  

Of course, every now and then, you catch something that isn't quite right.  

For example, if you look at certain pieces by Michelangelo, you'll start to see that he knew how to capture incredible amounts of detail, and he understood the male form to a degree which still astounds, but he actually wasn't so great at painting the ladies.  

Part of this is because of the times, and part is just that they seem to be dudes with effeminate faces and little boobies tacked on in ways that just don't happen in human lady bodies.  

Even female body builders don't look like whatever the Hell he was doing. 

In this image by Nehemiah Partridge in 1721, we see that either he ran out of room having planned the composition poorly, or he forgot around the middle that he was painting a three year old girl.
Her face is haggard and her arms are incredibly long.  
...And her body is... wrong.  Just wrong.  



I mean, maybe she was a three year old who looked like an adult and had been cut off at the knees and forced to wear shoes on her stubs?  Maybe?  

Or perhaps the poor girl was somewhat orangutang in shape?

Actually, one of the first paintings we came across involved a double rainbow:  

  
I felt the need to point it out.  

Later on, my companions happened upon a sort of hidden image within an image.  

You see, from far away, it was a highly detailed landscape.  

On closer inspection, there are two men discussing something on the road. 

...Then you notice their dogs.  

Maybe the dogs were just poorly placed, but holy crap.

Some of the modern art was neat.  
The modern stuff tends to be hit or miss for me, as a lot of things are items I would consider an intelligent practice or for fun, not so much something to hang in a museum for others to contemplate.

One of my favorites looked like an ocean from far away, and when close up...  

As you can tell, even right up to it, I had trouble figuring out what the white lines were.  At first, I thought they were white paint strokes in little ribbons, but they were too uniform, so I thought perhaps it was actually string... 
Nope.  Fucking claw marks, man.  Gouged paint in this thing.  Really neat effect.  

The other one I liked a lot was a wall thing involving birds and guns.  

Yep. 

We went to the gift shop (of course) where Rob and I found a little scarab to put in our collection of stuff from things we've done together.  

The plan is to look through said box on our anniversary.  
That'll be fun to figure out what the Hell some of that crap is from.  
Not everything is labeled.  

Then, from the suggestion of a friend, we went to an arcade/bar/food place.  
...Restaurant.  The word is restaurant.  

Said friend handed me a card and a few tickets and I went to town on the skeeball machine.  (Sometimes "Ski-ball" or other names.  Depends where you go.)  

I was rocking it until I was being watched.  BUT tickets were achieved.  Of course they were still only enough for random crap...  

So we got some glorious random crap.  

Ol' Benjamin there is on a pack of cards.  We didn't win money.  

Good times.  

Goooood times. 


 
  

Birthdays!

Again, being back at my parent's house is odd on many levels.

For one, I forgot about what my mother does for birthdays.

...My mother keeps things. Like... Everything. I'm not sure if it's a security thing or what, but it means that she'll reuse decorations like a really environmentally aware crazy person, rather than just a regular crazy person.

As such, I get bombarded by every birthday I ever had upon walking into my old room.

So, I had a troll birthday once.

I really, reeaaalllly liked trolls. I had hundreds of them, but they've since all been given away. Well, not all. I kept a couple really neat ones, like my Egyptian guy.

I'm awesome.

Shut up.

So the birthday party... How old was I? I don't even remember.

I had a troll birthday ice cream cake, troll plates, decorations... Oh yeah. I was trolled up, and apparently, this one fragment survived to say hello today.

Next up was a balloon attached to the inside of my door. Meaning, a deflated balloon. My door is kind of disgusting because I used to have a lot of stuff all over it, then tore it all down when I moved, aaaaannnd it still has gunk from all that crap.

So this is what that looked like:

Real classy.

My window is now sporting a bikini, 

and there was also a banner on the stairs.

What I'm not showing you is this foldable thing that involves a cupcake with eyes. Not only was this particular item kinda creepy as a kid, but as a now 27 year old adult, it was a little funky having it at the head of my bed... lookin' at me.

I asked my mother if she minded it's removal.

She thought about it.

She got me a couple tops and an action figure of Otho to add to my Beetlejuice collection.

Otho is kind of a big deal in my brain, just as Mayor Maynot of Nightmare Before Christmas. They were both played by Glenn Shadix, who has passed on.

In any case, the figure was wrapped in metallic silvery paper. I opened it up and realized that it was the inside of another wrapping paper made for Hannukah. I thought that was a smart way to re-purpose the wrapping paper.

Actual quotes below:

My mother is actually a very intelligent woman.  

She is also a nursery school teacher and I think somewhat in denial of the entire world.  So...  There is that. 

In any case, my father gave me a cold for my birthday, and I started my morning with a nose bleed. 

As I told my friend and my mother, it was like my face was trying to participate in the festivities.

“HERE! HAVE A NOSE BLEED! LOOK! I MADE IT MYSELF!”

My mother was looking on the bright side, as always...

My eighteenth birthday was a fun one. It was a Bruce Campbell party. I had all my friends dress up as various characters of his, while I was the man himself. This meant I wore a Hawaiian shirt and glasses.

I quickly questioned my assignment of Ash to a friend of mine when she said “Oh, that costume will be easy! I'll just go to my father's workshed, get the chainsaw and-”

We even had a cake with Bruce Campbell's face printed on it. ...Yep.

Most of my cakes over the years were either ice cream cakes or actually pumpkin pies.  I have no use for normal cakes. 

By the way, I actually sort of met Bruce Campbell in person once. 

I'd say he was solidly unimpressed by me. 

Nice enough guy though, so it didn't help my fangirlness. If anything, it just made it worse, because then I could say “ZOH MUH GUH HE LOOKED AT ME FOR A MINUTE!!”

I'm sure I'll try to relate that whole story sometime. For now, back to birthdays.

Lesse...

OH!

So my 21^st birthday was a hoot. I had a vampire masquerade. We rented out a space in the firehouse for it, and my friends acted as a live band. I invited everyone I could sort of call a friend at the time. It was like Facebook but in person.

“I vaguely know you! You don't know this person... but you should! BE FRIENDS NOW.”

I still have my giant blow up grim reaper. The decorations over all were pretty freaking awesome.

My birthday last year was actually a lot of fun for me, even if it ended kind of horribly.

See Birthday Bashing

Now, there is one special birthday I should mention here.

My 19^th.

It never happened.

I'm not saying it was bad. Not at all. It was a very peaceful day. So peaceful, in fact, that I totally missed that it was my birthday.

...as did everyone else.

It was my first time really away from home, off at art school three or so hours away (depending on who was driving). I had a cellphone for the first time in my life and I didn't really know what to do with it, I had my computer... I had ways to tell the date.

I did.

But I didn't have any clue that it was November 17^th.

And neither did any of my friends or family.

I had been in a minor car accident (this seems to be a theme?) with my mother, and being over 18, the insurance guy called me to hear my side of things.

What else? Ah. My 16^th.

I called it my “Sour Sixteen” because I was a creepy goth kid even then.

A costume party, as most of mine are, I told everyone to come dead. If they didn't come in a ghost/ghoul/zombie type costume, we'd “kill” them. ... With makeup.

We had people drown, be slapped to death, strangled... It was a lot of fun.

I was thinking of not posting this right away and saving it all till tonight, because tonight is glow golf... but I'll just add an edit after the fact. 

TO BE CONTINUED 

...
EDIT: 
 Here is an image of one of my friends, to give you an idea of how the rest of the night went.  

The glow golf is at the mall around here, and we had about ten people playing.  Mom stayed for a bit and then fled... Which was fine because a couple of my buddies came home with me.  We played a couple ridiculously long games of Batman UNO, because I'm an adult and I do what I want.  

In any case, glow golf itself was a ton of fun, and I wasn't the only birthday-haver present.  A gaggle of children were seated in the little party corner, and when they started singing "Happy Birthday", I decided that they were very nice.  Well, clearly, they were totally singing for me.  

After all, I am the Empress and it was my birthday. 

The whole place is divided into two sets of golf, but it doesn't make any sense since there isn't another entrance.  You can't actually play the other one unless you've gone past the first... so the fact that it starts over at "One" is stupid. 

We all behaved rather well until that second "One" showed up.  Then it was chaos.  

It was a good chaos though.

The music was hilariously awful.  A friend (who I call Xena for probably obvious reasons) described the people in charge of the music as "a bro and three *giggles like a valley girl*"  Another friend decided later on that this made them "sises"...  

They didn't know who Queen was.  We all felt a bit old, but...  Really?  Really you don't know Queen?  

I wanted to slap their parents. 

Xena described "Under Pressure" and got it played in honor of the fact that the band played that at my 21st birthday.  Nostalgia for the win!

Even sitting on a bench afterwards and hanging out while mini Christmas trees were fisted was fun.  

Yes, you read that correctly, and no, I'm not going to elaborate. 

The Birthday Bashing

I have a tendency to be very dramatic when the situation does not call for it at all, and then not dramatic enough in times of crisis. 

Some examples:
When washing dishes:

When out of chocolate:

When hair comes out in the shower:

When the lights go out during a storm:

But, recently, I had an incident where I should have responded more dramatically, and I didn't.

At all.

It was my birthday.
It started out great!  My (at the time) boyfriend took me to the zoo!!
I was ecstatic.  We saw everything.  There was a Bengal tiger, a freaking jackal, seals and sea lions:

At one point, we wanted to see the "nighttime" animals, thinking that there may be bats.  We got very lost, searched some more, and found that we were right by them to begin with.
There were adorable things... but there were only three of them.  ...and no bats.
Also, there were little orange monkeys that were adorable and my boyfriend wanted to feed them but I was like, NO BITCH and he was like BUT DEY BE CUTE!
*ahem*
We got cotton candy, beverages, and a pretzel with cheese. 
I was very pleased.
Nobody got eaten. 

Then, we went to dinner with two of our friends.  I got a very tall glass of god-knows-what-alcoholic-something-with-strawberries.  There was a SHIT TON of crab, which was lovely, and way too much food in general.
My boyfriend commented on the rather large, goblet like glass he had for his beer.  Being my father's daughter, I asked the waiter if we could buy said glass.  It was only $8 for this rather hefty thing, so why not?  Especially since he paid the rest of the tab.
Then, we went to the store to get some fabric.  A day or two later, I used said fabric to make this:

He now has spines on his back as well.  The outer one is named "Fido" and the inner on is "Fred".  He's about 90 inches long, because I'm insane and have a problem.

EDIT: Look!  Spines!

Anyhoo!  On the drive back from the store, we were chatting.  I said, and I quote, "This has been, like, the perfect day!"

And then we got T-d. 

On my side.

Ow.

My door was crushed.  I got smooshed.  We both had whiplash and hurt heads.  No blood or anything.  No concussion. 
My left thigh was pretty seriously bruised.  I was limping for a couple of days. 
What happened, really, was that Saabs are amazingly safe, so I didn't die.  However, my airbag punched me in the arm, sending me smashing into the center console.  So, with my seat belt on, I didn't go flying onto my boyfriend, but I still got pretty banged up. 

This is where I should have panicked, but I didn't.  You would think, "oh, what a wonderful life skill!", but no. 
What I mean is, since I got the wind knocked out of me, I wasn't really breathing well at first.  I sat there wheezing.  My boyfriend asked if I was okay.  In my head, I didn't think "Oh shit, I may have just been crushed in some way, since I'm having a hard time breathing..."  No.  I thought,

Quickly followed by, "oh no!  I have to save the left overs!!" 
I blame my mother for this.  I feel she responds to similar situations in similar ways. 
In fact, a few days later, my mother actually asked, "So, what happened to the left overs?"

...The answer is that my boyfriend had a *bit* more to think about than drippy bags of food. 

In any case, while that was all a bit shocking, it ended well for me. 

I got to ride in a fire truck.  Yeah.  Heated fire truck... which I thought was funny.
They took me home.  ...Well, they took me home after being a little too friendly for a bit:

I politely declined their offer of being a mascot.  Ever see Rescue Me?
Just like that. 

Later on, we went to a hospital, just in case.  They gave us pain pills and stuff to relax our muscles, but said we were fine beyond that.
We were put in separate rooms, which was reasonable, except for the snooty man saying "Before you ask, NO, you may NOT share a room!"  I half expected him to call us imbeciles or philistines.

When my bullshittery was done, I had three different people tell me what room my boyfriend was in, and to "Go to him!"  So, naturally, I figured he was going to die.  Here is where I panic for no reason.  I stayed calm, and it was both comical and horrifying to see him plopped on that hospital bed in nothing but a gown.  It was his demeanor that made it comical, really. 
He is a very chill dude.  I need that.
Anyway, we were both fine.

When I first got home (via fire fighters), Tiger looked at me, put his hands on my waist and asked "Does it hurt here?"  When I said no, he then picked me up.  I like that he checked first.  It was very cute.

At one point during this whole thing, a police officer took my information.  When he saw that it was my birthday, he very quietly asked, "It's... It's your birthday?"
He had a look on his face like the love of his life had just dumped him.
I wanted to give him a hug.
After a while of awkwardly pausing, he said, "Happy birthday?"

He and the car were clearly the real victims here.

EDIT:  Because more than one person has asked, yes.  Yes the goblet survived.  It was HEFTY and perfectly fine.  My now-ex has apparently spent the next year bitching about his shoulder being kinda funny, but we'll chalk it up to him being a delicate little flower at six foot whatever.  My hip is still wonky from time to time, but I suck it up and deal like a man.  UMPH.