A Tale of Two Birthdays: Death, Kidnapping, and Sugar Balls.

December is The Month of Patti.

In other words, it's the month that I was born.

Although I was born in a hospital, and not a manger, it was a pretty small, country-ish town, and I wouldn't doubt it if someone working or visiting there had some goat or mule in their family DNA somewhere.

And I'm sure that my mom would claim that she was a virgin at the time, if she thought that she could get away with it.

I will now pause while you all applaud the glory of my birth. Actually, you should applaud the fact that I have lived to see this many birthdays, what with the double death wish of sass and freakish medical oopsies that I've got going on.

Yes, my mother's uterus decided to give me the gift of being a December baby. And If you know anything at all about December babies, it's that when it's our birthday time, we often get screwed.

December is so freaking busy with the holidays and everything, that the last thing anyone has time for is worrying about your silly old birthday. If people can climb out of their Christmas spirals long enough to remember that it's even your birthday at all, they will either give you no gift because they're out of money due to all of the presents they had to buy, or they will try to give you a twofer. Ya know, the old "Happy Birthday and Merry Chrsitmas! Here's your gift!" Yes. GifT. Singular. I have decided that if someone says that to a December birthday baby, you should just say "Ssssssssss," to which they will reply "Huh?" to which you will reply "Don't you mean GiftSSSSSSSS," to which they will reply "Oh you're so silly. This is your combination gift!" to which you will reply with a swift kick to the ovarnads.

Non-Christmas parties are also total suckage in December. If you have a party, nobody can come. Nope. That little Baby Jesus done stole your entire guest list. There are Christmas parties galore, and ain't nobody dumping the Baby Jesus for your stupid butt. Only one person holds all the one way tickets to Heaven, and it sure as heck isn't you. That baby gets TOP priority. The whole darn month is his. Sure, you can compete with little Sally Johnson's lame-o December birthday. You are more fun and your mom makes better party snacks. You will have no problem poaching her guest list. But If you try to poach that holy baby's list, hellfire and damnation will be yours. Ok. That may be a little dramatic, but I think you get the gist.

I don't really remember too many of my birthday parties. I only know that they occurred, because there is photographic proof and my parents can barely turn on a computer, let alone construct photoshopped "evidence" of parties I never had. But those parties weren't a huge deal or anything. They were tiny little gatherings for some quick cake and ice cream.

The first party that I actually remember, was when I had my first slumber party. That was a big deal for me. I was turning (I think) 11, and my mom had finally given in and let me have a pretty decent sized sleepover. I guess we had sent out the invitations pretty early, because the turn out was surprisingly good. I was sooooo excited. My mom had baked a ton of goodies and we were all going to sleep on the living room floor and pig out and talk about important things all night, such as "Who would you marry? Ricky Stratton or Derek Taylor?"

I. Was. Pumped.

Not only was I finally getting some of the birthday attention that I so rightly deserved, yet had been denied for so long, but I was getting it for a period of approximately 12-15 hours. For 12-15 hours, I would be queen. This was gonna be some good stuff. Plus, everyone would be talking about it at school on Monday, so it would be like my birthday was going on for days and days. I was gonna milk this for all it was worth, and ride this birthday wave as long as possible. This would be my time in the sun, FINALLY, and ain't no Baby in a manger gonna steal my spotlight. Not this time. Not with MY slumber party going down up in here.

Then, about an hour into what was surely going to go down in history as the best slumber birthday party in the history of ever, someone came to the door to tell us that our neighbor, who was the grandmother of one of my guests, had just died. Not only had she died, but she had died in a horrible accident that was described in great detail to the room full of slumber party girls. There were tears. There were neighbors coming and going. The whole block was mayhem.

Nothing ruins an amazing birthday party like a dead person. I mean seriously. I can't think of anything. Nothing at all. Except maybe two dead persons.

I did have other slumber parties after that. But only a few. There was totally a cloud of "Remember when that lady died during your party?" hanging over any possible festivities. And, to be honest, I think I was always on high alert and waiting for something bad to go down. Cuz once your party is upstaged by a death, it's kinda hard to let that go. It's like, "Welcome to my party. I hope nobody dies this year. Good luck on making it through the night."

After than whole unfortunate situation, I pretty much gave up the perfect party dream.

Until this year

Most of my Facebook readers know that I have a thing for Justin Bieber. And by "thing" I mean that I have a sort of ironic, fake, and totally fun-filled love for him. Seriously, that boy is just really fun to pretend to love. Thursday morning, I had heard about the thwarted JB kidnapping plot that someone had been busted for, and I made the following post on my FB page:

I would like to state for the record, that I had absolutely nothing to do with the plot to kindap Justin Bieber. If I HAD had something to do with it, then this morning, instead of hearing about a really poorly planned and easily thwarted kidnapping plot, you would have awakened to the sound of millions of little girls doing that loud, dramatic, wailing, hyperventilating cry, cuz if I was heading that operation, The Biebs would be gone, baby, gone. But let's face it, his whereabouts would only be a mystery until maybe lunchtime, cuz I would totally be bragging about it and posting photos of him with my Zombie Babies and maybe a few of him vacuuming or washing dishes. I am nothing if not (a) A kidnapping expert, and (b) Really bad at keeping secrets.

So one of my friends told me that she was having a birthday lunch for me. I was meeting them at a restaurant, and this is what I looked like when I walked in:

And I looked like that because I saw this:

Turns out, he HAD been kidnapped. But I still maintain that I had nothing to do with it. He was a gift to me, and I'm not super up to date on kidnapping laws, but I'm about 0% sure that if someone kidnaps someone and gives them to you as a gift, it's totally allowed. I mean, the actual kidnappers sure as heck broke the crap outta some laws, but the person they gave the victim to, did nothing wrong. It's rude to turn down a gift, you guys. Even if that gift is a blindfolded kidnap victim. That's just super bad manners.

Since I am not a rude gift receiver, I adored my gift:

And we shared a soda of love:

And a tender moment:

And a birthday dessert (I know it looks like mashed potatoes, cheese wedges, and meatballs, but it's mousse, sorbet and sugar balls. Which is JB's new nickname, BTW):

And he got to go home with me (that paparazzi is a bitch):

And then I made him do housework, like I said I would:

And then he got to chill and hang out with his new brothers, The Zombie babies:

So I wanna thank these people:

Becky, Simi, Jenny, Stephanie, and Flat Biebs, for giving me the 11-year-old girl's birthday party that I never had. I loved it long time. And thank you for all staying alive so that I could be in the spotlight.

P.S. Special Thank You to Bombay Palace of Sugar Land, TX, and our super sweet (and totally game) server Narayan, for feeding us some amazing food, putting up with our shenanigans, taking photos for us, making me a special Bieberiffic dessert, and just generally being awesome. xoxo

P.P.S. Thank you to all of you who have asked if you can send me birthday gifts. You are all soooo sweet but the answer is no. (a) I don't give out my address because I don't want to end up kidnapped like The Biebs, cuz although he ended up with someone awesome (me), I would no doubt end up with someone who wanted to make my skin into an ottoman, and (b) I would rather you give the money to charity.  Project Night Night is my December Charity. All proceeds from my Zazzle Store go there this month. AND you can donate directly to them if you don't want to buy any of my crap.