Money In, Money Out, Money Gone

As a parent I try to do the best I can for my kids, especially on their birthdays. The problem is, I can’t always do it all, especially for Will. Poor guy, his birthday just falls on a bad month, MAY.

Most people don’t really have an issue with the month of May, but none of these people are me. May brings flowers, Mother’s Day, and summer vacation to most. Don’t get me wrong, I like May just as much as the next guy, it brings me all of these wonderful things too, plus a few extra prizes. In May we have the additional pleasure of celebrating my husband’s birthday, Will’s birthday and oh yeah my birthday, which always seems to be left on the back burner, but I’m not complaining, after a certain age celebrating your birthday just doesn’t seem as glamorous or mysterious anymore. Let’s not forget the graduations and weddings that start to pop up. Then to follow on June 1st is my wedding anniversary. What were we thinking? Once this blessed month is over our money in our account has come and gone, and usually we have over drafted. Yes, May is more dreaded than Christmas by our bank account each year. I just don’t understand, no matter how much we save, it is never enough for the month of May. Some years I wish I could just skip the whole month, the way the Krank’s did in the book, Skipping Christmas.

This past May, I had Will’s birthday all planned. It was set to be an airplane party, because the kid is infatuated with them. He see’s airplanes the way Luke’s see’s "The Ladies". Everything was going as smoothly as it could when preparing for a child’s second birthday. It was time to make the cake. I have always made my kids’ birthday cakes. I’m not sure if it’s just me wanting to do that special for them, or if it’s because I pick party themes that cannot be found by a single sole. Honestly I did try last year to get a cake made, but I was sadly told by every bakery I went to that we do not make airplane cakes. I had the picture in my head of exactly what I wanted, and I was not going to stop until I made that cake just that way. Now, I am not a baker, a cook, yes, but not a baker. This is probably another reason I like to make their cakes, it is one of the few times a year I bake, and everyone in the house looks forward to all my mistakes, and yes there always are. Then they swoop in like vultures and eat any evidence of the sad and deformed cake. I got everything together. Step one preheat the oven, and whoosh, the oven is on fire! Holy Crap, what do I do! I reach over to shut the oven off, my arm had a few less hairs and I reach for the fire distinguisher. By the time I turn back around the fire or what should be called explosion was gone. I shut off the gas, and take a deep breath. I could have just seen the news report, “Mother burns house down, trying to bake her son a cake”. How was I going to explain this one, and most importantly, how was I going to bake this cake. I throw the batter into the fridge, which I later to find this is not such a good idea because it does something funny to the batter. My gracious neighbor later allows me to use her over to bake this so called cake, and it cooks for double the time and the sides and burnt and the middle is gooey. I start all over again, and I finally get it just right, and the cake turned out pretty good in the end. I just had to remind myself of the big picture.

Back to the oven, well it’s broke. Blowing up in your face is never a good sign. Great it’s May, and our oven is broke. We have to have an oven. I had been saving for a new one because I secretly hated the one we had, by teaching cooking classes, yes cooking classes, not baking classes. Our oven was the builder grade one, which happened to be the ugliest piece of crap oven I have ever cooked with. I had the oven picked out for years that I wanted, and it was more money that I had saved in our account, of course. What to do? We moved some money around and prayed for nothing else to go wrong. We were doing really well until August, but that’s another story. We got the new oven, it cooks and BAKES great. Most importantly the month of May was almost over; we survived, if that’s what you call it.