Is it bad that in my four years of parenthood, I’ve yet to throw a real birthday party?  By “real” I mean the kind with other kids, party favors, and an organized game or two.  I’ve just never managed to get it together enough to pull off such an event. Today is Wee P’s first birthday, and rather than preparing for my first class of the semester, which begins in 20 minutes, I’m sitting in my office trying to justify my failure (once again) to plan a party.

Here’s the rationale I’ve been offering myself:

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My reverse culture shock began on the flight home from China.  At what our bodies believed was 4:00 in the morning, the flight attendants came around and plopped enormous styrofoam cups of ramen noodles on each passenger’s tray.  Chris and I were disgusted by the idea of eating shrimp-flavored noodles in the middle of the night so we politely refused our attendant’s offer to fill our cups with boiling water.  As far as I could see, all the passengers around us did the same.  It’s possible that a few of the plane’s biggest gavones actually gobbled the stuff down, but I imagine there were roughly 250 unopened cups of noodles hanging around on our fellow passengers’ trays when the attendants came back around to clean up.

After having spent several months in a country where very little is wasted, I had assumed our unopened cups would be redisseminated for passengers on the next flight.  I was therefore shocked and fairly disturbed when I realized that perfectly good food was being tossed in the trash.  All I could think was, “These noodles could feed Ayi and her family for a year!”

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“Pulsating Abdominal Mass.”  I realized as I was writing those words in the “reason for visit” field on my pre-appointment paperwork how ridiculously dramatic they sounded.  However,  the other options I considered (e.g., Throbbing Knot in Belly, Suspected Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm, Possible Alien Fetus) seemed no better.

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