Mum's the Word.

Mother's Day and my family birthday celebration were awesome.

Had my brother, Steve, and nephew, Jake, over..Steve's task for the day was drilling into the brick and mortar of the house to put up a new flower box for my mom. It IS indeed hard here at Camp Miklasz not having a man around all the time to do household projects. We rely a lot on our awesome next door neighbor, Jeff, who is the custodian at our church. Mind you, Steve's STRONG, but he was having a helluva time drilling with his drill and bits into the brick. 

I was enjoying the sunny, warm day outside working on my writing. Jeff's daughter, Mariah, who sings with my band at church, dropped by with red velvet cupcakes for us all, including Luke and Jake, who were upstairs at the time, having spent some time filming themselves shooting BB's into a picture of Justin Bieber and trying to set it on fire, though the wind kept extinguishing the flame and the paper wouldn't burn. Bieber's got THAT much staying power. 

(For some reason, I got an issue of Billboard magazine in the mail, to which I don't subscribe. There were no music charts in the magazine, however, and it ended up being just a magazine-sized advertisement for the Billboard Music Awards. Lame. At least, via the magazine, I figured out who this Snooki woman is that everybody's talking about.)

What'd Steve do with his cupcake? Epic fail. Jeff had run over to church to get a special drill that goes into cement, which saved Steve a crapload of time and manpower. 

Steve's cupcake:

The neighborhood was visited by a lowly mouse, who decided to run from one side of our complex to our side of the complex, which drove Mariah and I (who were hanging out outside) onto our chairs with our legs, my mother completely freaking out and Steve looking for the mouse by Mariah's air conditioner. Ma decided to get out the big assault rifle...the water hose, and spray until the mouse revealed himself. Soon enough, he did, running directly through Steve's legs, which sent Steve about 5 feet up in the air, and soon enough the mouse disappeared into the weeds of the unkempt people across from us, probably terrified. 

Came inside the house to find Luke, once again showing off his brute strength by him lifting me up again (118 lbs), lifting up Jake (140 lbs), with Jake picking up Luke (holy crap!). Ma, already frantic, said to the boys, "Be careful! You might hurt your testicles!" which seemed ODD if no other response, but it's Ma. 

After the yard work was done, we all went to our favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner. It was delicious, even given the giant black hair in my chicken and broccoli, which made me gag. There was also something black floating in my water, though I generally avoid the water at his particular restaurant because it tastes moldy. I stick with the tea. Ma was none too pleased when Luke sneezed with a mouthful of food, half of it coming back out and heading in multiple directions. It's not like he did it on purpose! 

I said to my brother, "Donald 'Duck' Dunn died." Ma was like, "What? Donald Duck's son?" "No, Ma. he was the bass player with the Blues Brothers." Etc Etc..we finished our meal, packed up the multiple leftovers to go, and went back home to celebrate my mom's and my special day.

Next to Luke's Darth Vader Tin of amazement, my favorite gift was that of a Buddha board from Steve and Jake. The concept is simple and zen: you paint with water on the surface with water, and before you know it, it dries and you have a clean canvas on which to paint. My first try?

My OM was messy, but accurate nonetheless. I liked the way the water extended the cross's length.

Commenced birthday celebrating, when I got dibs on the special cake my mom makes but once a year for me. It's a sponge cake layered in freshly whipped chocolate cream. it's an orgasm on a plate, and I ate a piece relatively the size of the Grand Canyon. FYI, it takes an average smoker with asthma 3 tries to blow out 6 candles:

Steve and Jake left in time for my mom and I to watch the series finale of "Desperate Housewives." When they left, I was in he living room with Luke.  My mom exclaimed what I thought was funny and random: "THEY'RE CHINESE!" Forgetting what we ate for dinner already, I misheard her pronoun.she actually meant "THEIR CHINESE!" leftovers. Luke raced out of the house and caught Steve in time before he drove away, thank Heavens, though he took off with Luke's leftover moo shu in tow. Ack, it's alright. 

Luke managed to videotape the vast majority of my birthday celebration, more for posterity than for YouTube fame. It was 45 minutes long, and shows my family at their wackiest. I'm not sure I'd *want* it up for public viewing, especially after my brother blew his nose at the table. 

All in all, it was a great Mother's Day (I got a goth/emo hand-drawn card from Luke that said "Have a bloody good day" and looked like a jagged knife inscribed it (how fitting), some candy and a balloon. The celebrating's not over yet...there's still my party on Saturday, growing ever larger. I think of  it not as an overwhelming amount of people in my house but rather a gathering of souls who all love me and in a lot of cases, love one another. 

Mazel tov!