Happy Birthday To Me

I failed.

I’m a big proponent of planning ahead. I tell my friends and family that I can rarely do things last minute. But I failed to plan ahead.

I failed to make birthday plans. I’ve been so busy trying to keep up with each day as it happens that I don’t have dinner/party/karaoke/anything plans. An impromptu text-message dinner invite resulted in more than half of the small crowd I invited telling me they can’t make it. Feeling dumb for expecting people to just be available, I cancelled the plans with the others. A majority of my immediate family is not able to go out to dinner on the night of my birthday. And I have plans/life-as-a-single-parent for the rest of the week. And the next week.

It’s one thing for a grown-up to skip celebrating their birthday. But if I don’t get my kid’s party put together, BIG fail. I’m still trying to figure out how the hell I can afford the celebration I promised her without coming off as a big jerk to the parents of the kids I’ve yet to invite.

Which of course is discouraging me from even attempting to work on her birthday party. Which makes me feel even more like a failure, cuz I can’t even plan my kid’s big day.

I hate doing this alone. I hate it. I hate that I’ll probably have to make Em call her dad on her birthday because he’ll forget it. (And no, “Jake,” I’m not gonna post it here. I know you read this and I’m not helping you to remember your only child’s date of birth.) I hate that I don’t have a birthday present for her yet. I hate that this probably sounds like a big whiny post and this hardly registers on the “single-parenting-is-hard” scale.

And I hate that this is going to sound selfish, but…

I hate that I’m not going to be able to celebrate my birthday the way I want to.

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Tags: birthday, busy, celebration, crying, ex-husband, frustration, party, single parent, stress