Happy Birthday, MOTHER!

Today is my mom's birthday.  She is the big 5-0!  Just kidding.  She's way older than that.  Remember?  I'm 41?  I wonder if she would be mad if I said how old she really is today?  I don't know.  Probably not.  Anyhoo, in honor of her birthday I will tell you my favorite story about my mom.  She is very practical and not given to a lot of mushy crapola.


When I was 11 years old, we lived in Australia.  We were visiting the Apostles Islands National Park, which is a series of beautiful cliffs on the coast.


My mom wouldn't let us go within fifty feet of the cliff edge, obviously, but my dad went up to the very edge, and when he looked down he noticed that there was another ledge about three feet below the main cliff and he thought it would be really funny to jump down to the lower cliff because we, being fifty feet back, would think he jumped the whole way down. I think the joke was supposed to be on my mom because Dad told us what he was up to. He went to the edge, looked down, jumped and disappeared. I remember my mom gasped and put her hands to her mouth and then said, "Oh my god! He has the car keys!"


I'd put a picture of my mom up here but she hates having her picture taken, so I won't.  I'll put her Facebook profile picture up instead.  It's not her, it's my niece, but people say that my niece looks just like my mom, so you can use your imagination and pretend you know what my mom looks like:

My mom, however, hardly ever wears a pig hat.  


Happy Birthday to my wonderful, generous, thoughtful, practical, MOTHER!  I love you more than all your kids put together!* 






*suck on that, Amy and Beth.