birthday apocalypse

I'm suffering from Birthday Fatigue.
Everyone I know had a birthday this month....tonight is the brother-in-law's.

The niece repsonded to the question "is tommorrow daddy's birthday?" in the negative...."no, it's my birthday."

The calender begs to differ (she shares a December birthday with her mother), but in practical terms she has a point- since the wife can't bear to visit without an armload of gifts it might as well be her birthday, or Christmas, or Kwanzaa, or whatever.

We're making pizza for the gathering. The wife is doing the dough, which she has a spiritual affinity for, I'm in charge of chopping and grating, suitably masculine kitchen pastimes fitting the mars/venus template within a worrisomely narrow tolerance.

Two pesto pizzas, one with goat cheese, olives and mushrooms, the other with gorgonzola and proscuitto. Two red sauce pizzas, one carmelized onion, roasted garlic and gorgonzola and the other a more traditional mozzarella, parmesan and salami.

Gifts for the neice are a red velvet dress and a copy of Madeline and the Bad Hat, while the brother in law will have to make do with a fetching new shirt and a special edition copy of Das Boot.

I can't drink beer any more, at least not to get drunk on. I come coldly awake at 7am regardless of how far into the morning the party went, and toss and turn fruitlessly until I surrender and rise to face the firing squad of morning. This may come into play this evening since my brother in law drinks nothing but.

I don't have this problem with real liquor. After Courtney's birthday this past week I drank tequila like water, danced my ass off until 4am and then slept like a baby far into the afternoon, purring like an immense tabby cat curled in a favorite chair.

The leisure to sleep off a magnificent and prolonged evening of debauchery is one of the underrated pleasures of life.

I work tommorrow and the chances of getting anything but beer tonight are slim, so Tuesday is a golden opportunity to bathe in the visual glory that is a hung over, insomniac Bax.