This week’s List post is the YELLOW list, a collection of facts about one of my childhood. This week’s theme, however, was harder to come up with. Favorite childhood books? Movies? Music? Games?
      Those will, at some point, probably make an appearance. But today’s theme is: Best Birthday Parties!
      Whaaaa? Really? Yeah. Some fun memories below. So here we go, in no particular order:

• Age Two, Alaska. Big Bird-themed. No, I don’t really remember it, but the photos slay me. Our neighbor in Alaska dressed up as my favorite Sesame Street character (Big Bird) and decorated a cake for me. Cute little gingerhaired Josie was in Big Bird heaven that day!
• Age Sixteen, a simple, low-key Sweet Sixteen. My parents had spent months assuring me that there was no way we could afford another car, so I expected nothing. I had a few friends over, we had cake, and I think everything was fun. Then my Aunt Donna asked me to go outside to help her get something from her trunk. Okay, I said, and blithely followed her. She stood at the edge of her car waiting and I gave her this look like, Well, Auntie Donna, open the trunk already. Only, next to her car was MY new car, a bright Orange 1980 Mercury Capri with a big blue velvet bow on it. I was so convinced I was not getting a car, I did not even register the obvious “gift” in the driveway. Oh, Clyde. How I loved you!
• Age Fifteen. this was actually really depressing. I had like, one friend over and I don’t even recall doing anything special except eating cake. I don’t even like cake. Why is this year on the list???
• Age Eight, Cedar Village. A whole slew of friends and kids from “around” (parent’s friends’ kids, neighborhood kids, Evie’s friends). I got lots of presents, including this one plastic necklace made of little black “chain” links that had all these multi-colored, randomly sized buttons on it. I freaking loved that necklace. Wore it all day. Wore it all summer. Lost it, eventually. But all these kids, out in the big backyard in Cedar Village, with the boom box blaring and water balloons and dancing around like morons. I remember feeling like I fit in – for a few hours at least – and that this was what “real” kids felt like. Fun and free and silly. It was a good day.
• Age Twenty, Ellensburg. Okay, so I wasn’t really a kid any more. But I did break a toenail a few days before and it had gotten infected and so I spent a goodly chunk of my twentieth birthday in the KVCH emergency room. Eventually, I saw a handsome nurse who gave me a powerful antibiotic shot right in the ass. Yup. Bared my butt to a man for the first time…on my birthday, for an infected toe. Sexy.
• Age Seven, Riverbend. Last year in Riverbend. I remember it was a sleepover and I had wanted to invite my friend, BJ Smith, and some other boy. I remember overhearing our parents talk about how we were still so young and how they may as well not set precident this year by allowing it, because it wouldn’t be long before we’d be wanting to have other sleepovers and well, that could not happen. *sigh* Anyway – it ended up being just the girls for the sleepover part and we watched some scary JAWS movie. I remember hiding behind the couch with a couple of the girls, peeking out to see what was happening because I HAD TO KNOW, but also being so scared that I could barely manage that. Eek! I loved and hated scary movies, even then.
• Age Twenty-One, Yakima. Also, not a childhood birthday, but one I remember. We went to The Outback in Yakima and I had my first legal drink (in the US) – a Wallaby-Darned. If I recall, it was a peach (wtf?) bellini or something. Semi-frozen. Oh! I’ll find a photo, why not? It was fun – anyway. I didn’t get wasted. So there’s that… (Photo used without permission, from OutbackSteakhouse promotional materials).
• Age Thirty-Four, Unknown. This year, I’m turning 34. Will we celebrate it big? I don’t know. Usually it is low key. Last year, we had a big fancy dinner (it was also Mother’s Day, so… steak dinners everywhere!) and then had to go to the hospital because Mark was feeling weird He was fine, but it was scary. This year, by May, I hope to be many LBS. smaller. He’s already nearly 50 pounds lighter. The jerk. Tee-hee. I think my gift to myself will be celebrating six months without chips. Whee!

      Birthdays, man. Crazy. I am totally for making a person feel special on the anniversary of the day they were born, I think however, that modern America (and the world) takes it to an extreme. We’re so vain and self-centered anyway, I think making TOO big a deal of it is unhealthy.
      That said…What’s your favorite birthday party ever?

Note: Image is “The Yellow List” by (ME)