No one picked my keys. Or, My 2009 party.

Birthday parties.
They always start with these elaborate, fabulous ideas in my head. A pool party. Bring all. Kids will be running around, splashing, laughing, playing, topping up mom's wine. Gorgeous friends, all color-coordinated in pastels and beige, sipping martini's and munching truffle-infused cheese and who-knew-you-could-fancy-it-up-so-much crackers. Breasts popping out of flimsy dresses, booze-induced sexual innuendos, boys patting each other on firm bums, glasses are clicking so often that we don't even need the stereo, laughter and happiness galore. Except for the designated drivers who are simply miserable.

Well that's what I had pictured. What I got was rain. So party canceled.

But that isn't the moral of the story. I do feel that because this is my first ever blog, it does need a moral. I will not be so righteous in the future. Nor have I ever been in the past (except for my brief time as a Zionist radical but again that's another blog)

So we decided to invite friends over for some truffle cheese at our place. Our place being a typical tiny NY apartment with views of the Statue of Liberty. You know, typical. Bring all. And they did. Not a pastel ensemble in sight. My pretty friend Jo baked a 3-tier, chocolate, Jewish princess cake for me. It was delicious. The kids managed to smear some of it onto the floor and walls but we did manage to salvage most of it into our gluttonous mouths. I scored great gifts. We laughed and clinked glasses. No one flashed.

And guess what? It was great. That's the moral. So quick you could have missed it had I not pointed it out in this sentence and the following sentence. The moral is that if you have great friends you can have a party anywhere.

Actually, because it's my birthday, I'm going to change the moral. Moral police be damned.
The new one is: Getting older sucks. I don't care how many woman pretend that it doesn't bother them, or how many times we have to read that botox-tsunami'd Jennifer Aniston is happy to age gracefully, it's just not true. So best we age drunk, and with lots of friends and screaming kids than all alone getting your face dot-to-dot needled at the dermatologist.