Birthday Sleepover 2006

posted at 1:15 am
on Nov. 2, 2006

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Susie and I went this weekend to hold my annual BIRTHDAY SLEEP-OVER.  (Last year it wasn’t all caps, because it was still in trial stage).  This year, the turnout was just perfect.  Boris, Clint, James, Mandy, Martin, Monique, Rachael, Susie, Tracy, Zak, and I headed over to Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island.  It was just a hop skip and a jump away, if a hop is the distance from here to Horseshoe Bay, a skip is the distance from there to Nanaimo, and a jump is a 40 minute drive to the interior of the island.

Susie arranged the whole trip and, though I pretended to be a big help, really all I did was make some pans of lasagna, do the driving, and throw some extra speaker wires in my suitcase in case the stereo needed additional cabling.

In fact, I almost became a bit of a liability, or at best a footnote, when we all got out of the car at the ferry terminal to wait, and Rachael and I wandered back towards the bridge to take pictures.  We dawdled for far too long, snapping this way and that. It was a sexy bridge, what can I say.

Suddenly, the announcement came—the ferry had arrived.  Our car was supposed to board, and we were no where near it.  Susie did what any good wife would do—she took her second set of keys and drove off without me, thus clearing the lane and allowing everyone else to board.  Sure, it was the socially conscious thing to do, but what about birthday boy?  She seemed to think the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few or the one.  She’s been in Canada too long.

I did, however, do one good thing: I provided a great excuse for everyone to get together and hang out, and I did occasionally exercise my birthday-boy prerogative to help the group move along when deadlock struck.  Which it rarely did.

Together, at the cozy, plebeian, and oddly nameless accommodations in Lake Cowichan (we think they were called “The Lake Cowichan Townhouse Accommodation"), we settled in for a night of fun and food.  Fun in the form of card games like munchkin and asshole, and food in the form of Boris’ delicious pre- and post-dinner snacks, and my lasagna, which did not catch fire.  I say this because the smoke detector went off several times and there was a little confusion over whether or not the pasta dish did in fact catch fire.

I would like to reiterate: it DID NOT catch fire, there was only a constant stream of smoke and besides, letting the night air in both doors was probably good for the health of those inside. Fresh air and all that.

Munchkin is a card game that is a little like Magic, but funnier and simpler, and somehow more interesting to girls.  Zak took to it like a duck to water, doing backstabbing things and generally being a ruthless and efficient munchkin-killing machine while every other player was trading little swords and helmets and potions back and forth.  I don’t remember who won, but I do remember it was my fault.

Martin and Tracy brought their dog Tennyson with them.  He was a happy happy dog, doing the three things that black labs do best: jumping in water, fetching a ball, and smelling funky afterwards.  He slept in Martin’s Lexus SUV.  Martin and Tracy got one of the two “private” rooms, while Boris and Clint slept in a bunk bed.  I got the best room—it was a true slumber party with a 3-person bunk bed and another double squeezed into the room.

I didn’t head to bed early, though.  Mandy and I were the two watchful night owls, heading out by the bonfire Martin had lit, sitting around and talking about family, simplicity, deviancy and leniency.  We would have covered even more -y words, but the sudden loud rustling of a creature that feared neither fire nor man (we’re sure it was either a black bear or a black bear-sized raccoon) made us both suddenly tired and needing to immediately go inside to bed and sleep with covers over head.

The next day, everyone got up early to resume eating.  I brought tea to various bedrooms to coax sleepyheads out of bed.  I think that the caffeine was helpful, but the main factor in getting people up was the sheer wonder of seeing me out of bed at 8:30 a.m.  But for me, one of the best moments in life is making breakfast with a group of friends in a quiet house.

And Boris again provided some great culinary zest—delicious cheeses to add to the eggs and bacon I brought.  Pancakes were also provided, cooked by Cabin 2 (no one took direct claim for their tastiness).

I should say, ALMOST everyone ate early—James got up even before dawn, and headed out to fish north of YouBou.  I mention this not because he returned triumphant, smeared with gills and scales and slime, but rather because I really wanted to type YouBou.  I mean, why?  Why name a town YouBou? WHY LORD WHY?

After breakfast, we cleaned and checked out of one of the units, and walked the town.  They were having a festival—a combination Salmon/Mushroom festival, where they served salmon and—well, just salmon.  No mushrooms.  No mushrooms for sale, either.  In fact, there was a decided lack of mushroomness of the festival, other than a collection of funguses in trays, labeled things like “tree killer!!” and “shadow mushroom (poisonous?)”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe there should be such thing as labeling a mushroom “poisonous?”—it’s like putting a sticker on a nuclear bomb that says “armed?”

The long journey back was made sad by the early departure of Clint, who took James and Monique’s offer of a seat in their car so he didn’t have to sit on top of Tennyson, or vice versa, in Martin’s car.  Goodbyes to our between our reduced group were said on the ferry, because after that’s when we drove off separately and back to our homes, smiling and slightly fatter.

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Keywords: birthday  •  cowichan  •  friends  •  lasagna  •  outing  •  sleepover

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