32 Buckle My ShoeCoincidentally enough, the second worst birthday of my life was exactly ten years ago (well, obviously the date isn't a coincidence, but the 10 year gap makes me wonder what I've got in store for my - perish the thought - 42nd birthday). Not that any of my birthdays have ever been particularly bad - I don't usually get all introspective and mopey, it was just that this birthday fell at a bad time, and, against type, I took the chance to do some self-indulgent sad-sacking while I had the chance. It's my birthday, as they say, and I'll cry if I want to.

First up - we'd been burgled. At the start of the week, we got home from work, went through the usual routines, got the boys to bed, then settled into our evening past-times. I'd recently bought a new toy for my PC that allows me to plug all my instruments (all, um, two of them) straight into my soundcard and play along with my dodgy electronic compositions. What I really want to be able to do is to get some guest vocalists in to add a bit of the ol' human element to some of the tracks, so, to do a bit of experimenting with levels and mic placement and whatnot, I'd borrowed a flash mic off a mate to see what was required in the set-up. Of course, the mic was the thing that I noticed was missing first. Thinking the kids had just picked it up and put it somewhere odd, I had a bit of a hunt around, which is when I found the long-lost lense cap for my digital video camera. I went to re-unite cap with camera. No camera. And that isn't something the kids can get at easily.

   "Do you think we've been robbed?" I asked the wife.
   "You know," she said, "I was just thinking that."

We poked around the house, and yes, indeed, the bedroom window had been levered open, and the thief had come in, grabbed a couple of digital cameras, the mic, and done a runner. Gutted. Still, it could have been much, much worse (one of the cameras, I have to laugh, was broken, and the thief nicked that instead of making off with a couple of much more expensive and actually working SLR cameras). All my rare CDs were untouched (well, yes, they're rare 'cos no-one else likes them, but still), my guitars, various bits of computer equipment, and the computers themselves. Although, if I was a thief, and I took a look at the 20+ cables plugged into the back of my PC, and the mad medusa-like nest they've become over the years, I too would be hesitant to start unplugging the buggers and risk spending the rest of the day untangling the ones I needed from the ones I didn't.

So, yes. Burgled, for one. Second was various work woes I won't worry you with, which actually led me to flagging work entirely on my birthday, and knocking off at lunch so I could spend the day with the family. A birthday present to myself. Or, at least, that was the plan. Upon getting home, the wife and I somehow got into a row which ended up with me cleaning out the guttering, and emptying and cleaning the long-neglected fishpond. There I was, on top of the roof, an overcast sort of day, scraping out the fetid decomposing leaves from the guttering thinking 'some birthday'. (Actually, once it was done, and the fishpond, it all felt quite satisfying.)

At the start of the day, I only got one present (more cause for moping) - some piece of design whizziness (see picture) from my wonderful Gran. I couldn't figure out what it was, and it had me stumped all day until she rang in the evening and explained. "And I thought you were clever!" she chortled. If you think you're clever, suggestions as to the mystery object in the comments box, please. (Hints: the top of each device screws off, the small rings around the middle of each body are made of rubber).

But the real kicker was the financial situation. Not since university have I (and in this case, we) been this skint. It's a major drawback of a monthly salary. In the first week we pay the bills, do a big food shop, fill up the car, pay off the credit card, and then try to survive the next three weeks on whatever shrapnel is left over. This month was worse than usual, with an expensive trip away added into the 'budget', so, with my birthday falling just a few days before the big pay-day, there was barely a cent to spend on birthday cheer. I took the boys for a walk down to the supermarket to get supplies to tide us through the weekend. I had $30. We needed various basics, a couple of dinners, and ingredients for the cake I was going to bake (for myself, on my own birthday), so I was doing the maths in my head as we went around (quite tricky when you've got two pre-school boys charging around demanding lollipops and chocolate), so, when we got to the wine section (surely a bottle of wine on my birthday!) I realised I was about $2 short of being able to buy even the dodgiest bottle of nasty red. So I just nicked a good one. Baby buggies are great for that sort of thing. It also meant I had $2 to buy some (sugarless) lollipops (aka shutter-uppers) for the boys for the walk home.

A good mate turned up mid-afternoon with a (how thoughtful) hand-made and painted box as a replacement for my tin that had been lost in the burglary. How thoughtful. A second present! And it even had some fresh contents! Brilliant. Maybe this wasn't really such a bad birthday really. She put the hard word on me to come out later that night to see a gig her boy was performing in, but I was still in a pseudo-grumpy mood, so made claims of 'no babysitter available' to avoid any commitment to going out and having a good time. This, naturally, came back to bite me in the bum when she later talked to one of my regular babysitters and discovered I hadn't even made the effort to give them a call. Busted.

Anyway, we got the boys to bed after dinner (I cooked - special birthday lasagne with spinach from the garden, followed by my not-too-bad-slightly-dry-but-first-effort-and-all banana cake), then settled down for a night of vege TV-watching. The first half of the Blues v. Sharks was entertaining from the old Cantab-enjoying-the-Auks-going-down kinda way, but we then discovered a Spike Lee film ('Jungle Fever') on Rialto, watched that (5 out of 10 - Wesley Snipes just isn't a good romantic lead, is he?), and then the first half of the Coldplay live in concert thing, before hitting bed, a year older than I was when I went to bed yesterday. And, as with my terrible birthday 10 years ago, the very end of the day more than compensated for any moping and negativity I may have inflicted upon myself during the waking hours. By a long way. Oh-hoho, yes it did.
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