September 15, 2011

Turning 26, or Surprise Birthday Party, The Third

CAAAKE
Momma cake and baby cake, soon to be destroyed.

"Uuuuugggnnnnhhh aaaaahhhhhh arrrrrhhhggu uunnngggh!"

That is the sound of:

  1. Being slowly gummed by a toothless lion
  2. Being gently prodded in the legs by a bowling pin
  3. Being completely taken off guard by a surprise birthday party for the third year in a row

I cannot attest to the first two, so it's the third. You probably figured that out.

20110908-bday-ragecomic-1.jpg

Inexpertly made with Dan Awesome's Rage Maker.

Why would I make such uncouth sounds after being showered with love by my friends? Love that still sort of befuddles me a bit because it's, like, a lot? (I still don't think I've done enough to earn it, pretty much. Still workin' on it.) Because...three years in a row! (Recap last year and the year before.) HAVE I LEARNED NOTHING?

20110908-bday-ragecomic-2.jpg

After crossing the threshold of Lee Anne's apartment, thinking I was there for a small dinner party that I had planned (ah, that's the trick!—make me think I'm in control), and them seeing a a room stuffed with friends who had come out to surprise me nearly a week after my 26th birthday (ah, the other trick!—throw the party after my birthday), I let out a few too many prolonged grunts of, "UUUGGGNGN HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN AGAIN, UUGHGGGHH AARAHRHA I AM LIKE THE DUMBEST PERSON EVAAAH, UUGUNGGN OMGG UHHGHAA," accompanied by all sorts of rubber-faced expressions of agony-delight-surprise that could be elicited by nothing else. I should've seen it coming. I was walking straight into the lair of the Surprise Party Planner Master herself. (Last year Lee Anne helped organize my surprise party even though she was hundreds of miles away and couldn't come.)

Yay cool people! Cake, we have Plushie playtime asap Noah made mac and cheese! Still goin'
Thanks to Gordon for taking photos!

And in her lair lay banh mi (from Co Ba), cakes (a carrot cake from Amy's Bread and a homemade mini chocolate cake from Melissa), chips, cherry brown butter bars (made by Emily—holy craponateapot those were good), bacon macaroni and cheese (made by Noah), streamers, balloons, Adventure Time, gifts, and more. 'Tis the most joyous lair.

Group, take 2
This was the shot where I told everyone to make funny faces. It sort of worked? Top row, left to right: Chris, Lee Anne, Veronica, Tom, Diana; second row: me, Kåre, Jeff, Claire, Emily; third row: Noah, Melissa, Gordon.

Thank you to all the people who came out—Diana, John, Melissa, Noah, Tom, Emily, Claire, Jeff, Gordon, Veronica—and to Lee Anne and Chris for hosting, and to Kåre for being a most excellent boyfriend and visiting during my birthday (he was here for two weeks; alas, he's back in Norway now). Extra points for Gordon for understanding the problem of being a photographer at her own party and helping me document the party with my camera. Also, thanks to Tropical Storm Irene for canceling my previously planned joint birthday party with Melissa (it was supposed to be on the 27th, my birthday, and a day after Melissa's); if not for that, the surprise party wouldn't have happened.

Can I be fooled a fourth year in a row? Probably. I'd say I don't want my friends to see it as some sort of challenge, but as time has shown, it's not much of a challenge when the inside of my head looks like this:

20110908-bday-ragecomic-blop.jpg

Yup. Yeah. It's not so bad. People sort of treat you like a little lost puppy.

Life is super good. And I have my friends to thank for reminding me of that every time we celebrate my loss of youthfulness. I hope you have awesome friends like that too. :)

Posted by roboppy at 12:28 AM

Tags: birthdays, Brooklyn, parties

Comments (17)

SURPRISE!!!

You just got surprised again!

Happy Belated Birthday!

Posted by: Marvo at September 15, 2011 4:28 AM [#]

How sweet! Good to still get those reactions from you! Happy birthday!

Posted by: Belinda @zomppa at September 15, 2011 8:05 AM [#]

Adorable! Happy Birthday!

Posted by: Rebecca at September 15, 2011 11:47 AM [#]

Very nice! Happy belated birthday!!

Posted by: Carrie Dahlby at September 15, 2011 11:37 PM [#]

Yaaaaaayyyy! =D So glad Irene didn't put a dampener on your birthday *groan* ;)

Posted by: Julie at September 16, 2011 4:18 PM [#]

Marvo, Belinda, Rebecca, Carrie, Julie: Thank you!

Posted by: roboppy at September 17, 2011 12:41 AM [#]

Aw. Seeing those funny faces gave me warm feelings inside my belly. I wanna try those cherry bars, AND BE GRIPPED BY THE FLAVAAAAAAAA!

Posted by: Jasmine at September 17, 2011 7:02 AM [#]

Happy birthday wonderful person who introduced me to Shake Shack!

Posted by: Mahar at September 18, 2011 12:29 AM [#]

I love birthday caaaaaaaakes.

Posted by: Sabrina at September 18, 2011 5:31 AM [#]

I HAD TWO CHANCES TO GO. And I failed at both. Sorry, friend-fail :[

Gordon's face is not funny. It is uber-cereal.

Posted by: Nicholas at September 18, 2011 5:34 PM [#]

Happy birthday!

Those "inexpertly made" illustrations from Dan Awesome's Rage Maker are adorable.

I have to agree with Nicholas that Gordon is a bit too serious in the group photo.

Posted by: Tina at September 18, 2011 6:29 PM [#]

Jasmine: THE FLAVOR IS SO TERRIBLY GRIPPING, IT WILL GRIP YOUR BRAINS OUT.

Mahar: Thanks! You too are wonderful.

Sabrina: I wish I could've shared with you cos there was like half of the cake left over. ;_;

Nick: Next year you can make it up by coming to my birthday party TWICE!...or...wait...I don't know. Something.

Tina: Thanks! Glad you liked the rage. Sometimes there's no better way to express my feelings. :) We need to teach Gordon how to make sillyface.

Posted by: roboppy at September 18, 2011 9:06 PM [#]

Happy Birthday!

Posted by: Rosebud at September 20, 2011 1:10 AM [#]

SO SWEET!
Happy late Birthday Robyn!!!
xxx cg

Posted by: parisbreakfasts at September 20, 2011 3:31 PM [#]

haha LOVE your drawings. esp that very last one. totally cracked me up!! happy belated birfday! :)

Posted by: PJ at September 22, 2011 9:54 AM [#]

Happy belated birthday!

Posted by: Danny at September 22, 2011 10:23 AM [#]

Rosebud, PB, Danny: Thank you!

PJ: Thanks! Alas, I didn't actually draw those pictures, so no credit for meeee.

Posted by: roboppy at September 23, 2011 12:00 AM [#]

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