12/10/2007

OLDER BUT NOT WISER

I may be 39 now (despite the fact that my user profile still says 37) but I apparently have the unrealistic optimism of an 8 year old...
...for Aspen's 9th birthday Saturday I let her have a sleepover. She ended up inviting 8 friends but only 5 showed up.
THANK GOD!
We will not be doing that again. They don't make enough Tylenol PM to quell a herd of 9 year old girls pepped up on soda and chocolate cake!
There's the answer to our energy problem right there! Harness that shit Al Gore!
I ended up missing some good football Sunday afternoon just trying to catch up on essential sleep that I didn't get the night before.
Fortunately things panned out by the end of the day. Aspen was busy checking out all her cool new stuff with her neighbor for hours so I was undisturbed in my rum induced nap on the couch. That left me with enough energy by early evening to get her and I ready for our orphanage visit.
That was pretty cool right there. We passed out candy canes and read 'Santa Mouse Where Are You?', 'Twas The Night Before X-Mas', 'The X-Mas Kitten' and one other one I can't remember. Aspen was quiet but poised and says she thoroughly enjoyed it and really wants to go back next Sunday as well. That was kind of the reaction I was expecting her to have and am proud she has. I guess that day will be kind of full because we're also going to visit her great grandfather that day who was put into a nursing home shortly before his daughter (Aspen's grandmother - duh!) passed away in late October.
I have been editing all my old video footage into a DVD of scenes that include her grandmother to pass out to relatives for the holidays. I shall bring a copy along with my portable player and let her great grandfather watch some of it. Hopefully it will be a positive experience for him and not a bad one. He is essentially deaf and it will be hard for me to explain to him that it is footage of his deceased daughter until he sees it.
Does that sound like good idea or am I, once again, as naively optimistic as an 8 year old?

Like how that went full circle there?