A First Birthday

You know how sometimes you find yourself playing that game where you have to provide random, unknown facts about yourself so people can guess who those facts belong to?  No?  Welcome to the corporate world.  It's an All Time Ice Breaker Favorite.   

I used to have three things at the ready for just such a situation, because try and come up with three random things about yourself on the spot and see how you do.  I'd normally keep my list under lock and key, but if I ever find myself in the corporate world again, enough crazy things have happened to me the last few years that I can come up with a new one.  My old list:

1) I've flown a plane
2) I wet my pants during an intramural basketball game
3) I once had the guys from the band Linkin Park in my apartment and DIDN'T KNOW WHO THEY WERE

Well, if Mason ever needs a random, unknown fact about himself, I think we just gave him a pretty good one.   

We had his one year old birthday party last weekend, and served LEG OF GOAT and a WHOLE BABY PIG.  Who, in this country, gets to say that?  He'd be one of a million in Brazil, but here goat and a whole roasted pig aren't the usual fare. 

The leg of goat is a usual attender at our Brazilian BBQs, and always turns out amazingly, but it was Gilberto's first time roasting a whole pig.  We didn't know any better and put it in the pan laying on its side, instead of resting on its belly.  We had to keep flipping the darn thing over so it would brown evenly, and when he pulled it out of the oven for the final time, all four legs had fallen off and were floating in the juice. 

It was not the most appetizing roasted whole baby pig, but I'm glad we tried it.  And now Mason can lay claim to having had goat and a whole pig served at his first birthday party. 


What he might NOT want to mention about his first birthday? 


That we had a dead mouse in the kitchen, and COULD NOT FIND IT.  We could smell it, but no matter how many cupboards we emptied or appliances we pulled out (and looked under and IN), we could not find the smelly bugger.  We thought that all the cooking we were doing might cover up the smell and fool our guests, but you could still smell that sickly sweet odor tinging the air. 

Or that the house was being invaded by ants due to a recent deluge.  They were crawling all over the walls and counters.  They descended on my pantry because they could smell the sugar inside the zip lock bag we keep it in, and apparently they like potatoes.  I found ants on the toilet paper, the water cooler and the pillows on the couch.  There's only so much spraying you can do before giving up, since I couldn't find where they were coming in, and I didn't want the toxins to poison our guests. 

(Let me just say that the ants won that battle, little bastards, but sorely lost the next.)

He probably won't mention that since it was the middle of winter, all of his guests were freezing.  Though they were all very polite about it and didn't say a thing as they huddled together for warmth.  Or that all the rain we had saturated the ground and the water from the leak on the back patio water spout couldn't get down the drain and backed up, creating a lake right where the party was going to be, and I had to scoop up every bit of water with a cup.  Actually, he might mention that because it was pretty funny, my ass up in the air, as I panted and swore with each scoop.  I had to keep coming up for breaks and to wipe the sweat away from my eyes.  Only I could turn water scooping into a physical activity.

To top it all off, Mason got gum in his hair after everyone left, and we were just so into cleaning up that we forgot about it.  And then every day for the next week we would say, "We really need to get that gum out of his hair!"  And then forget again.  We finally got out the canola oil and de-gummed him yesterday.

We did learn one very interesting fact about leaving gum in hair for such a long period of time, which I'm assuming most people don't know because they're better parents than we are- it's a great dread facilitator.  The right side of Mason's head was really rockin' the Rasta look.          

We didn't intend to throw Mason a shindig with enough fodder for him to make several random, unknown facts lists about himself, but that just seems to be the way we roll. 

Next year we're going the bouncy warehouse route, where it is warm, ant free and our guests aren't subjected to the open belly of a legless pig staring at them when they go for more potato salad.
   

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