Sixteen

Here are 16 awesome things about today:

1. It's son C's 16th birthday! Holy crap, I'm the mother of a 16 year old!
2. (Also born on this day: Nikita Khrushchev, Senor Wences, Thornton Wilder, Harry Reasoner, Don Kirshner, Boomer Esiason, Liz Phair and Victoria Beckham! Awesome!)
3. C has his learner's permit but no interest in getting his actual driver's license. (Yes, this is an awesome thing. If you have a 16 year old, then you know. Oy.)
4. I genuinely surprised him this morning with a massively massive mylar birthday balloon and he is IMPOSSIBLE to genuinely surprise because of the teen ennui and whatnot, so YAY ME. 
5. When given the choice of elk burgers or spaghetti for dinner he chose spaghetti, which is awesome because we only have canned tomatoes and I require fresh tomatoes on my burgers and that means I don't have to go to the store and can instead hang around the house all day in ratty shorts and flip-flops. Which is what I'd much rather do.
6. No one in our house has any meetings or appointments tonight. Awesome, and rare.
7. It is a gorgeous day, sunny and summery. C would prefer it be raining, but this isn't his blog, dammit, it's mine, and I require sunshine, OKAY?
8. All four of my tomato plants have tiny green tomatoes on them. YES.
9. I'm almost done with Louise Penny's Still Life and it is FABULOUS and I can't wait to read the rest of the series, except...
10. The Bloggess's book is out today! So as soon as I've finished Still Life, I can start Let's Pretend This Never Happened (by Jenny Lawson, in case you don't know who The Bloggess is and don't feel like looking it up).
11. Or if I want to prolong the anticipation a bit, I can read one of the other hundreds of books I already have loaded up on my Kindle. (Have I mentioned lately that I love my Kindle? I LOVE IT SO MUCH.)
12. My awful dog and I took a walk on the greenbelt this morning and saw literally thousands of tiny butterflies (there's a lot of thistle on the greenbelt and apparently that's butterfly crack).
13. Speaking of my awful dog, I took an (awesome!) artistic photo of his butt.

14. Speaking of photos, one of mine showed up on The Pioneer Woman's website today (it's that first one, which may look familiar to you)(it's not another photo of my dog's butt, in case you're afraid to look).
15. I found a hidden, forgotten stash of Cadbury Cream Eggs in my closet today. THEY ARE ALL MINE.
16. But the very most awesomest thing about today: I do not have staples in my abdomen, nor am I vomiting constantly and clawing at my own skin in a fit of post-surgery morphine-induced psychosis like I was 16 years ago right now! So that's good.

Happy birthday, son C. You were well worth all the staples and vomiting and skin-clawing. And then some.