My family can be verra flexible when circumstances call fer it (tho' I'm still workin' out the kinks on my own flexibility!), and since tomorrow, my real B-day, I'm gonna haveta work at the theatre from 10 to 3:30 (the longest day of the practices), my sweet family surprised me with a Virtual Party! I came down groggily from a very heavy sleep to find the table arrayed with homemade party hats (thanks, Katsy!), crepe paper everywhere, crumpled at the ends (thanks, G.B.!), and thanks to Mom and Dad for the loverly presents crammed onto the table surface. My cake request was a little odd: a pan  of Rice Krispies Squares, sparkling strawberry juice and chocolate ice cream! But hey, it rocked! We had the party at one thirty or so, and I loved all my gifts! I got a throw with cats and books on it (the cats were reading the books), a monogrammed pen with Post-it notes, a repeating parrot toy (which makes us sound like a munchkin!), an aquamarine book bag, a heavy sweater with colorful cats, a vintage cat toy (can you tell I like cats?), several sweet crafts from the Girls, a cloth piece with handpainted flowers to go over my desk, a beautiful smelly-good candle, some books (AHHH!!!!!) and these two weird little doo-dads called Gags; they're plastic monsters with a clip, suction cups and a magnet, and you hide them and your family or friends go and try to find them.  I'd seen them in a magazine and had commented on how cute and odd they were, and I probably dog-eared the page (I'm bad fer doin' thet).  Anyway, I count a lot of the things that happen right before and right after my B-day as B-day gifts, such as some goodies from Wal-Mart gotten last Friday, that CD ordered a month ago and coming in a few days, my books from the online swapping site, being able to get my Photobucket album and my being able to work goodies into this blog, the musical, Syd spending the night in a few days...wonderful thangs loik thet. BTW, tomorrow we have our once-a-year Lucky Charms and my annual chicken fried steak-and mashed potato dinner, and our relatives and friends usually send cards, plus a good friend of mine in another state send each other birthday boxes, so it's loik I'm having two B-days! Oh, and we stopped by Wal~Mart as we were getting supper, and I was able to get that chocolate-brown bookbag. It's glorious!

Anyways, it's all awesome.  Thanks be to God for blessing my life so richly.

A special notice to Mom and Dad: I absolutely LOVE all of my goodies! God bless your kind and sympathetic spirit, Mom, and goodness knows how much I appreciate your good work ethcis, Dad! (And for Heaven's sakes, I'm not being patronizing! But I think it's easier for my to express my love and admiration for y'all in writing unstead of wording it.)

Again, thank you!

Ooh, special news! The Editor-in-Chief of the fancy Homeschooling Today magazine has expressed an interest in my writing, brought about by an email Mom'd sent him about a month ago, and would like to see an article I've written on good literature and a book report (I'm gonna do it on Little Women, go figure), so I'd appreciate y'all's prayers.

Congrats to Angela M. and her family for the newest member of the M's, Hannah Mae (Godly Girls magazine)!

~PIP~