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 Tooth Fairy

This tale explains how much trouble both of my parents will go through just to make me happy.  As much as I've given them a hard time (like most children), I actually do appreciate the ridiculous nonsense of things my parents did for me, such as the Tooth Fairy. 

See, for me, the Tooth Fairy didn't leave money.  No no.
The Tooth Fairy left presents. 
How did he or she accomplish this?
Was it through some magical, fairy means?
Oh ho, my friend.  I'll tell you. 

Flat things.

Whenever one of my poorly designed teeth finally gave up and fell out, I would get a new sketchbook, or sometimes a puzzle or a book...  Flat things.

The puzzles were freaking awesome.  I remember one of Dracula, one of The Toxic Avenger, one of the cartoon of Beetlejuice (it's Lydia and Beetlejuice riding a skateboard and it's so awesome that I had the thing permanently glued into a mini poster!), and even one of ballerina troll dolls. 

I loved all these things as a child.  And, for the most part, I still do today.  ...Except for maybe the trolls.  ...I was sort of obsessed with collecting those freaky little smiling bridge dwellers. 

I had at least a hundred of them.  They were slowly given away and sold at garage sales over the years. 

...However, I did still keep a few.  I kept ones that had traveled with me, and special costumed ones of things I still love.  One is dressed as an Egyptian, for example.  They are mostly in storage now, but... quite frankly so is a lot of my crap.  When I have room to display everything (or I'm just finally at the point where I'm ready to give up some more children's toys) then I'll proudly get them out of storage.

On a somewhat related note, I was never a big collector of beanie babies, but I did wind up with (and still have) some of the cooler ones.  I have the platypus, a ghost, a scorpion...  You know... Ones like those.

Oh oh!  Quick other story of my mom being awesome! 
One year, for Halloween, my mom made a costume for me that to this day is still the most fantastic costume that I ever had. 

I was a vampire troll.

I had fangs, puffed up, black troll hair, Mom did my make up in a troll-like fashion...  She cut a costume out of felt-like fabric that totally resembled something my troll actually wore...  For the feet, I wore pink tights over my sneakers and she drew freaking toes onto the tights. 

I was awesome.

In any case, back to the Tooth Fairy.

Usually, my mom took care of "contacting the Tooth Fairy" whenever I lost a not-so-pearly white.
This time, I had a loose tooth that was ready to exile itself from my head when my mom had to leave for a trip.  I don't remember where she went, but I'm sure it was lovely. 
Either way, she made sure that the Tooth Fairy was prepared. 

I went to sleep, head on pillow, content in the knowledge that I would still get a wondrous flat present for my tooth. 
I heard a thump, and awoke.

See, my room was never particularly clean.  These days, I actually have the ability to become frustrated at my own mess and take care of it.  Then?  Not so much.  I had two big defenses for this.  A: I don't go by "do as I say, not as I do", so until my parents cleaned THEIR room, I wasn't doing shit.  B: this way I would be awoken to an intruder.

Case in point:
I turned to see my father, in his sleep attire (which was pretty much just his underwear and T-shirt), holding a piece of paper, whilst sporting a very panicked "oh shit" expression, staring at me like a deer in headlights.

"Uh... Yes Dad?"  I had kind of always known that the Tooth Fairy was actually my parents.  Now I just knew that it was primarily my mother's job.  Clearly, this poor man was out of his element.

He handed me the piece of paper.

I wish I could draw out the whole thing, but my handwriting is not nearly as nice as my mother's.  In fact, my dad, my sister and I all have almost the same handwriting.  My mom's is the only one that is perky and legible and perfect.  Her handwriting matches her personality well.  Meanwhile, my father and sister are both left handed, so not only are their writing styles very difficult to read, but they also lean the opposite way like some freaky, mirror language.  ...and mine is just a scrawl with no real excuse.  I'd say "oh, I have that deformity in my wrist, remember?" but really, there's no reason.  You, as my audience, get to see my neatest handwriting in my little illustrations.  My neatest.  Yeah. 

SO!  The letter said something to the effect of "I am sorry that I could not make it for your tooth just yet, but I have sent your father to give you this letter for me, in my absence." (Did she KNOW he wouldn't be able to accomplish this task, or what?) "Instead, take this as an I.O.U., and I will be sure to give you a gift soon!" 

First of all, the letter took up a whole page, so it was actually much longer and more in depth than that.  That's just the gist. 

Secondly, all the periods were little teeth like this:

Yeah.  My mom wrote a letter AS THE FREAKING TOOTH FAIRY and my father tried (and somehow failed, but it's okay... he means well) to hand deliver it to my pillow. 

What can I say?  My parents, in their own strange, collective way, have always been problem solvers.

For example, my parent's den was crooked. 
Like, it sank into the middle.
I once told a friend that there were dead bodies under the floor, and as they decomposed, the floor sank in.  For all I know, that may have been true.

So, I grew up with books and such crammed under lamps and furniture in an attempt to ignore the fact that our den was crooked. 

This was the only part of the house that did this, and eventually my parents had the floor re-done so it was no longer an issue. 
Still, for my whole childhood, I debated if a slinky would move across the den floor on it's own.

Anyway, I remember playing along with the idea of a tooth fairy for a while after getting that letter (that was all too suspiciously in my mother's handwriting), thinking that my parents would be depressed if they knew that I knew.  ...I was also probably afraid that I would no longer get presents for losing teeth.

Considering all the work that's gone into my face dentistry-wise at this point, that was probably a silly fear.  My two front teeth are dental implants.  The two on either side both have caps because everything was moved over by one, after both of my lateral incisors were removed.  ...And so, my parents are STILL helping me feel better about losing my teeth, to this day.