I’m one of those spoiled little princesses who gets my nails done every two weeks.

Oh… I didn’t used to be this way.  No, ma’am.  I was one of those girls whose fingernails were an eyesore… who tried to curl her fingers tightly around the pen whenever she wrote out a check at Walmart, because she was afraid the cashier would notice and remark on how UGLY her nails actually were.

And then I got a gift certificate to a posh little salon, with a fantastic cowgirl who does nails exactly the way Jesus intended for them to look, and boom!

Hooked!

I’m a slave to the acrylics now, and I have reworked our budget over the past three years to include heat and groceries and air conditioning and running water and nails.

And then this morning, while I was making my bed, I shoved my hand between the mattress and the headboard to pull the fitted sheet tight, and I bent the fingernail on my middle finger backwards… snapped it off… and the pain nearly made me call 911.  I can’t imagine that an unmedicated amputation in the middle of the ghetto, by someone who earned his doctor degree by watching old episodes of Gray’s Anatomy, would have hurt any more.

So if you see typos of any kind in this post, just know that I’m beating the keyboard with one less finger right now.

So.

We had Birthday Weekend at our house, because we’ve never been able to reign the festivities in and keep our celebrations to a single day.  Birthday Fest ’14 kind of spread itself over the entire weekend here, and that was fine.  We finished on Sunday night with a kind of exhaustion that is usually reserved for people who strap an adult gorilla onto their backs and walk from one end of the Sahara Desert to the other.

On Thursday night, the boy’s buddies, Enzo and Ben, joined us at our house for a little overnighter.  It’s because Hubs and I asked the boy what he wanted to do on his birthday, and you can only imagine what he said:

GOLF.

Because apparently golf makes every day better, and it makes birthdays spectacular.

So, we got an early morning tee time, and we were set to embark on eighteen entire holes with the boy, Ben and Enzo.  The boy’s wish was also that we would rent carts, because RIDING IN STYLE on your birthday trumps WALKING IN THE HEAT WITH YOUR GOLF BAG ON YOUR SHOULDERS.

That was the plan.

On Thursday evening, our neighbor boy, Andrew, joined the fun, and some kind of gun war erupted in our yard, because boys smile at the thought of pegging one another with plastic BBs.  And smacking one another over the head with homemade, wooden clubs.  And swinging bristle-less broomsticks at one another.

I’ve never understood why they can’t just enjoy a good evening indoors, trying out new lip glosses with one another and talking about their favorite cheesecake recipes.

Hubs and I fed everyone a nutritious dinner of hot dogs hot off the Traeger grill.

And chips.

And APPLES!  Don’t forget the apples that I made them eat!

By late Thursday night, everything was ready for the FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY the following morning.

And by everything, I mean that the presents were wrapped with ribbon and care.

Thing 2 and Hubs and I went to bed, and we left the three teenagers in our basement family room.  They were well armed with bags of leftover potato chips, MORE APPLES, the TV and the PlayStation.  I’m not sure that they could have possibly needed anything else.

On Friday morning, after two full, blissful hours’ worth of sleep, the boy was up and smiling.

HE WAS OFFICIALLY FOURTEEN YEARS OLD!

We had presents and pancakes.

(And if it looks like the boy is wearing the same T-shirt on Friday morning that he wore on Thursday evening, it’s because the boy is wearing the same T-shirt.  Teenage boys go to bed at night in whatever they wore that day.  There is no need for pajamas, when you have perfectly good clothes on.)

(Another thing that I don’t understand about the male tribe.)

And then, after forcing all three of the teenagers to shower with real soap and shampoo…

… we were off.

Hubs and I went because we were the adults with legitimate driver’s licenses who could legally rent golf carts.  The boys assured us that they would be USING US for the sole purpose of securing carts, and that they — however underage they might be — would be doing the driving, so please SIT TO THE SIDE OF THE CART AND DON’T COMMENT IF I TEND TO TIP IT A LITTLE ON THE HILLS.

And yes.

Ben opted for his traditional cowboy attire for eighteen holes of golf, and I loved it.  That kid can rope a steer, ride a bull, castrate a calf, jump fences on horses, and drive a feed truck, and he’s only thirteen.  He’s amazing.

We only had two carts, and three underage drivers.

There was all manner of arguing about WHO WOULD DRIVE WHEN, let me tell you.

These eighteen holes of golf turned out to be one of the highlights of my summer.

I can’t remember when I last laughed as hard as I did on Friday, out on the golf course.  In fact, we all pretty much had side aches from ALL.  THE.  LAUGHING.

And since it was BIRTHDAY GOLF, the boys threw all the real rules under the bus.

They had do-overs.

They had double do-overs.

They picked balls up out of the weeds and tossed them onto the greens.

It was one giant, hysterical CHEAT SHOW.

Eventually, their pancake breakfasts wore off, because they are teenage boys.

Five enormous pancakes will only last forty-four minutes, before they are digested completely.  This will leave a young boy ravenous, to the point that he believes death by starvation is about to happen.

So, Hubs and I ordered them cheeseburgers, which the nice gal from the clubhouse grill delivered to them on the eleventh hole.

After refueling with burgers and fries, they were off once again…

… arguing over whose turn it was to drive a cart…

… and back to their game of Birthday Golf, with very few rules.

And!

I have photographic evidence that they did indeed finish golfing the entire course, because I made those three boys pose with the flag after every hole was completed.

(Remember when the boy and Cousin B did that last year, when we golfed eighteen holes together?  It was a fun tradition to keep up, since I had to be a caddy again for the entire golf course.)

See?

Some four hours later, we were finished.

The golf carts were returned.

Our sides hurt from gut-busting laughter.

And the boys were complaining that the cheeseburgers were SMALL CHEESEBURGERS… like cheeseburgers meant for a TODDLER MEAL… and they were starving again…

Raising boys takes a lot of food.

Honestly, the boy’s 14th birthday and our round of Birthday Golf will go down in my memory as one of THE VERY BEST DAYS I’ve ever had.

Especially since Enzo and I sang “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in our golf cart, at the top of our lungs, with harmony and sound effects.

It was pretty much a musical.

So I’ll leave y’all here.  Round Two of Birthday Fest ’14 will have to be blogged about tomorrow, because AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT RIGHT NOW!

Y’all have a fantastic Monday.

(The boy is a bit sad today, because he’s looking the first day of the 8th grade square in the eyeballs… TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY, PEOPLE!)