My Best Birthday Ever

July 28 , 2004

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My Best Birthday EverMy alarm was set for around 4:30 in the morning but I'd been wide awake ages ago for a number of reasons. It wasn't just my birthday I was excited about, it was all those new thoughts that had been buzzing through my head for the past few days ever since I'd discovered that I had Asperger's Syndrome. But that's another story. even though thoughts about this condition have consumed my every waking moment these days. At around after four I finally gave up trying to sleep anymore and got out of bed to take my shower. Then after I got dressed I made us scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. I wore my green dress with lilacs and carousel horses embroidered on it. Then we watched Joyce Meyer. Then Dave had his shower and got dressed while I packed some chocolate muffins for my journey. We caught the 6:15 Go shuttle and everything flew smoothly without a hitch! I bought Dave a Toronto Sun newspaper while he went ahead and got our train tickets. Soon we were on the 6:27 train and on our way! I'd brought a couple books along to read-- Lawrence Osbourne's American Normal and my newest SARK book, Making Your Creative Dreams Real, but I couldn't concentrate to read. Instead, I stared out the window, hoping to see a deer or something. The sky was gray and overcast and the train seemed to move along more slowly than usual, but we made it into Union at 7:27 as scheduled. It didn't take long to find mark and Janette once we got there. They were already upstairs and we had been milling around downstairs. When we met, Janette was wearing her turquoise dress with blue and green fish and flowers that she'd bought at Queen's Quay. She presented me with a big, colourful button that said 40 on it and had a sparkley purple ribbon with sequin flowers and ribbon roses hanging from it. She opened up a zippered case to show me the entourage of stuffed animals they had brought with them: 2 Birthday Bears and 3 ladybirds: Ace, Lilac and their newest member of the family, Calypso. I had brought Waddle and Wee Doo in the mesh compartment of my backpack. The men went off to buy our tickets while Janette and I chatted away eagerly as we held fort! Then it was their turn to hold fort while Janette and I went downstairs to the magazine store. Janette could not resist this adorable Aesop's Fable children's book about bugs; Ant and Grasshopper, I believe it was. The drawings were so cute! I bought myself and Archie and Jughead comics digest and a bag of new butter-toffee flavoured Cracker Jacks, as I'd had the munchies and a craving for caramel corn. We then sat back upstairs and enjoyed a time of jovial banter as we waited until it was time to catch our bus. Dave and I got fascinated by the antics of a pair of pigeons flying around in the building; a male in hot pursuit of a female who was playing games with him. At first we were going to call them Kevin and Winnie but then we decided to call them Dave and Shawna as Shawna Wolfe is always playing annoying games with Dave Van Wart. It was a slow, boring journey, but we did our best to try to make the time go fast with plenty of excited chatter even though the bus inched along the Lakeshore amidst remaining rush hour traffic.

Finally we were in St. Catharines! When I got off the bus, a young lady noticed my button and said Happy Birthday to me! After much fiddle-farting around and general kerfuffle, we finally figured out which bus to catch to get us there! During the bus ride we had a conversation with a lady who also loved horses and carousels and talked to us about the farm she used to have. She seemed kind of eccentric like us. I was almost a little worried that if we got too involved in our conversation we'd miss our stop, but she had to get out before we did. I felt like Donkey in the Shrek movie, always wanting to ask the driver Are we there yet? Are we there yet? It was only a 20 minute bus ride but I felt like an impatient little kid who was experiencing time in slow motion. Fortunately the driver was very nice and let us know where to get off. The first thing we wanted to do was find a place to eat lunch! We were all very hungry campers and most of the restaurants were rather pricey. We looked in at one of the gift shops, showed the lady the purple horse Janette had bought from me and left my website address on a note there. We finally decided on this place that was part of the theatre. The play that was playing there for the summer was called Tom Foolery, of all things! That's also the name of a KIDOE song! Actually, come to think of it, this may have been the same place Janette and I ate at last time we were here in 1997, but we couldn't sit out on the balcony this time because of the rain! Would it EVER stop?! Service was slow as there seemed to be only one waitress there being run off her feet. We decorated our table with purple balloons and a garland of magenta-purple roses with the purple carousel horse ornament in the middle and made the best of things. Janette ordered fish and chips, the guys ordered burgers and fries and I ordered the lentil soup, followed by the eggplant cannelloni. The lentil soup was totally different from any lentil soup I'd ever had before. Other lentil soups were ore like orange pea soup. This was a clear broth with lentils and and pieces of leek. It was surprising ly quite filling and I couldn't finish it! I let Mark and Janette have the rest. My eggplant cannelloni wasn't quite what I'd expected either. It was made, strangely enough, without pasta! Thin slices of the eggplant itself were wrapped around the ricotta cheese filling (which in my opinion could have done without the pieces of carrot) and served with tomato sauce. Although the three tubes looked quite small on my plate, they too were surprisingly quite filling! Mark and Janette presented me with a card and present. It was a beautiful card with carousel ponies and my present turned out to be a wooden horse-shaped hanger to put on the wall for coats and things. My Pina Colada seemed to disappear fast. I joked that Waddle must have been sneaking sips and we had a good laugh while I held him up to the table pretending to get him drunk, staggering around and hiccuping. We got silly making the edge of our glasses whistle. All n all it was a wonderful time. After we ate we made our way to the carousel! Dave bought 20 tickets which we shared amongst us and the afternoon went by in a colourful blur as I went on one ride after another, starting with a beautiful, white, outside-row Looff sander, complete with the classic star-burst jewels! My second was an Illions jumper in sort of a peculiar nondescript color. I gave my camera to Mark, but I'm afraid he wasted nearly half the film taking a picture every time I went around! I had to tell him to stop! Dave and I tried to ride together in a chariot, but I'm afraid it wasn't big enough for both of us, so I rode some other animal. I forget which one. All I know is that through the course of the afternoon I had the chance to ride examples of every

menagerie figure there was: a giraffe, a goat, a camel and one of the two lions.

Then we took a walk along the beach, where Mark, Janette and I took off our shoes and got our feet wet. We would have wanted to take a walk to the lighthouse but there just wasn't enough time! So we sat by the playground where much to my surprise, Mark and Janette presented me with yet another gift!! The Niagara Ventures Challenge board game!!! I let out quite the squeal of delight! We then decided on one more ride on the carousel. There were only two tickets left so I bought one m,ore and we stood at the front of the line for the next ride. Dave had sat out most of them because his knees were sore. We'd been together in a bigger chariot during the day. Janette chose her favorite horse, a beautiful, small, white Looff jumper with mauve and pastel trappings and pink flowers. I took the white Illions jumper next to her and Mark rode a horse on the inside row. After our last ride we moseyed on into town and had ice cream! This place even had BIRTHDAY CAKE flavour! It was like French vanilla with chunks of golden cake and swirls of blue frosting. I had a sugar cone with that, topped by MacIntosh toffee flavour and Dave had a waffle cone with orange sherbet. Janette got birthday cake and Smarties. I forget what mark had. We thoroughly enjoyed our treat as we sat at the table in air-conditioned comfort! Our last stop was the candy store. It was a wonderful place! Willy Wonka videos were playing on TV screens throughout the shop. Dave bought us Bit O' Honey and I chose a bag of JB'z. They're really glorified Smarties with flavoured coatings. I chose banana, coconut, cappuccino, graham cracker and toasted marshmallow. We wished we could have stayed longer. I didn't want this day to end! But soon we caught the city bus and were on our way back to the terminal. At the bus terminal there was a Subway restaurant, so we got subs for our supper. I wasn't really that hungry after all and ended up just picking the seafood out of my sub and eating it by itself as well as some of the tomato and throwing the rest away. Subway seafood has too much mayonnaise. The journey home seemed to take forever and I felt kind of squished in my uncomfortable bus seat. I was glad when we were able to get off the bus at Union. There we hugged and said goodbye to Mark and Janette. The train wasn't as crowded, but there were noisy kids running around. I was tired, but at least it was a good kind of tired. When Dave and I got home, he was pretty upset because he couldn't find my birthday present anywhere! We prayed and prayed several times! I even called 100 Huntley! It was not their most ridiculous prayer request. The lady who prayed for us said that obviously God must have a reason for us not being able to find it. So I got to open the rest of my presents. My secret sister had given us a beautiful stainedglass picture frame for our anniversary and a book of embroidery for my birthday. My Aunt Anne had given me a bottle of Warm Vanilla Sugar liquid hand soap and a carousel horse brooch. And Dave spoiled me rotten with tons of KISS stuff!! KISSopoly! KISS trivia game! KISS push-button puppets! A Rock and Roll Over clock, and a gorgeous Gene Simmons action figure! I have him sitting in that little wooden porch swing. I was too full and tired to eat any birthday cake so I had my bath and went to bed. I had my best night's sleep in ages although I talked in my sleep. I know my dream had something to

do with cartoon characters and Asperger's Syndrome and I kept saying Hmmmmm...! All in all, I know I've had the BEST BIRTHDAY OF MY LIFE and festivities aren't over yet. I enjoyed a big hunk of my cakeBailey's Irish Cream cheesecake with berries-- for breakfast the next morning!