I celebrated my birthday last month and successfully aged 1 year. Last year was a "Big Birthday" but due to last year's Halloween storm I was unable to gather troops together, so it went by with a quiet grace and gentle thankfulness for things like heat and electricity. This year, I vowed to make up for lost time (so to speak) and throw myself a party. And if I was going to have a party, it was going to be *my* kind of party! (If you know anything about me, you'd start getting nervous right about now.)

There are two things I am generally known for amongst my family and friends (and often hapless acquaintances minding their own business where I work, work-out, or where my kids attend school who are likely to get swept up in my madness...poor, innocent souls), those two things being: creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. "My kind of party" was due to involve costumes, baked goods, and more than one thematic bit of silliness. And, I am proud to say, we did not disappoint!

I threw myself a Steampunk Dinner Party.

Menu included appetizers, dinner, dessert and after-dinner tea to be enjoyed by all the creatively coiffed.

First came the most important things: costuming and food. My costume choices were put aside for the time being (knowing that I have plenty of fun things to choose from) and I concentrated on the fun of dressing up my kids (the best part of being a parent is getting to force my creative whims upon cute, small people!) as well as creating an extra stash of accessories in case someone should balk at the idea of dressing up or didn't know what "steampunk" meant. Pssh! As if.

The Pigtailed Overlord, unsurprisingly, wanted to be a mad scientist so we concentrated on her flared lab coat jacket buttoned with a cameo pin, long velvet skirt draped in delicate charm-bracelet chains, and made a tiny top hat complete with mini hydrangea and blue bird with pearl eggs to match her blue-rimmed glasses. Maestro went as a science professor; the bow tie and white lab coat made him look like a mini Bill Nye the Science Guy and when we added goggles, he became Dr. Horrible. I removed the goggles for my own sanity.

Fun-to-make hat! Personalized lab coat & bow tie!
(I don't post pictures of my kids in case they have any desire to have a normal life someday.)

For myself, I flip-flopped between two looks: punky-militant and traditional silver-and-black. (I went traditional, with a promise to myself I'd wear the purple wig outfit again soon. Maybe picking the kids up from school...)

Then, I started cooking.

I bowed to saner inclinations and ordered dinner from one of my favorite Middle-Eastern caterers so I could have goodies like falafel, roasted eggplant salad, hummus and baklava without the hassle. Me, I concentrated on baking! Like my first Steampunk Tea Party, I wanted to make the cookies again, but maybe this time do a little better with the coloring. Fortunately, I had my Mom with me (the original baking genius) who was just as excited to make "Machination Cookies" as I was! Alas, *still* no good source for gear-shaped cookies, I was ready with my cups, my glue stick cap & binder clips!

Some were gears, some were gauges, some were iced and others coated with metallic sugar, but ALL were delicious and a big hit!

Yes, I know I'm insane. Yes, I know that it's considerably less effort to make circle cookies and draw on them or, saner yet, buy them from the grocery store bakery, but honestly, *this* is what I enjoy doing: making some over-the-top project to share with family & friends. The results were well-worth the effort! (And speaking of over-the-top, I loved making these "Top Hat" Cupcakes, inspired by some incredible steampunk cupcakes I saw online!) I used my staple rum cake recipe with Mom's Ghirardelli chocolate frosting and a Tootsie-roll goggled top hat set at a rakish angle:

I *loved* making these! (Almost as much as eating them. Almost.)

Okay, I didn't get the copper fondue pots ready in time and changed my mind about the elephant shrines piled high with exotic fruits and fitting Persian rugs under the tables, and instead opted for peacock feathers and gold paper doilies. There were plenty of friends and family to share in the lunacy, obligingly costumed and we even dressed up one of the favorite puppets as mascot.

Friend as a mechanic and her dashing pilot beau posing with The Esteemed Captain Fluffbottom

We laughed and ate and hung around the kitchen listening to Pandora's Abney Park station, admiring each other's costumes and talking about the things we geek out most about: books, movies and crafts. In a word: perfect! And now I'm old enough to say that THIS is definitely the way to celebrate being a grown-up!

You know you're a writer when...

...you can turn any experience, no matter how wondrous or horrific or banal, and think, "I can use this in my writing someday!" This is a good thing. It keeps things in perspective in a "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You" kind of way. Such was the case two days ago with my maiden voyage into the world of acupuncture.

Being married to a karate instructor who studied abroad and sister to a holistic, natropath-savvy PhD, I know more than a little about Eastern medicine. I have been offered vitamin elixir for my greying hair, Japanese Miracle water for vitality, advised to add more "red" to balance my diet, and have tried everything from Tai Chi to Somatics so it's not like I'd never heard of the benefits of acupuncture, I'd just never had a want to try it. Early on it was my complete terror of needles, abruptly cured after two drug-free pregnancies requiring post-drugs due to complications. These little follicles of steel? No problem. But given my history of being the perennial "exception to the rule" for anything medical, I shied away from messing with my already-touchy nervous system. The words "almost never happens" or "it's rarely the case" is an immediate red flag that I'm about to undergo some bizarre life change ala Jekyll and Hyde with my health. No, thank you very much.

This time it was a sneak attack: I wasn't even prepared for the possibility of acupuncture as I was visiting my chiropractor to continue making adjustments to my neck and lower back after the WWE incident. He asked me what I thought about acupuncture. I said I'd never tried it. Before I knew it, I had needles going into my neck and shoulders and two more in my wrists and being told to lie flat and relax. Honestly, the needles didn't hurt. It was a flick and then a sort of pinching sensation. I'd heard of others who had fallen asleep during their acupuncture sessions so I concentrated on relaxing my shoulder and letting myself drift.

But I was failing to drift.

In fact, I was becoming more and more aware of the little pinches and, having a slight cold, my head was slowly filling with snot and it was becoming harder to breathe through my nose. Lifting my head brought a sharp reminder that there were many tiny, sharp things in my neck and not to do that. I let my head fall back down and tried breathing through my mouth against the bubble of paper that made the air stale and warm. It was uncomfortable and irritating and I had no idea how much time was passing, but I figured I'd just wait it out and then it would be over and hopefully some of the pain would miraculously disappear under this pincushion treatment. I waited. And waited. And waited. And then the spasms began.

What had begun as pinching had graduated into full-blown twisting and throbbing with sharp knocking reminders behind my ears that there were *needles* sticking into knots in my body. I gave an involuntary, "Ow ow ow ow!" and then hushed myself for being such a baby. Moving my head moved the needles. The spasms increased. I began to twitch. Hearing the doctor off in another room, I chanced to call out, "Can we please take these out now?" but it was too far away or my voice was too muffled int he paper because there was no answer. Even when he was out in the hall. Even when the secretary passed my door. I called out, even lifting my head against the sharp pains, muttering "ows" and "Please take these out!" But no one heard me. My foot started to kick. My lower back complained.. I started to whimper and swallowed it down--ideas of getting help or ripping them out and not stupidly lying here like an idiot warred with my socialized need to be polite and not make a fuss and do what the nice doctor said. I had no idea what time it was, but it kept ticking. I was alone with pain and pins and my own berrating thoughts. But there was this moment, feeling helpless and stupid for enduring something I clearly didn't like and no one listening to my now less-than-polite calls for help, that I had a Clockwork Orange revelation that I did this to myself and now there was nothing else to do but endure it, nowhere else to go, no one was going to come and there was no escape.

I started to cry.

This did not improve my stuffed-nose, warm-breath paper prison that quickly got soaked and stuck to my cheeks. Tears turned the white paper grey. I tried moving my hands which twinged around the pins in my wrist. No go. My pinky started to burn. The third finger of each hand felt like there was a stinger in the pad. My cell phone started ringing. That did it. I carefully reached across the table, slipped my phone out of my coat pocket, thumbed the button on and placed it next to my face. It was my husband looking for his keys. He could tell I was crying. I told him that I'd been stuck in the room for now 28 minutes and no one seemed to know that I was there. He told me to hang up and he called the office, telling the secretary to go back to my room and take the needles out. Not one minute later, she appeared to check on me then ask the doctor if she could remove the needles. Then did so quickly. I snuffled and thanked her and apologized and felt embarrassed and small. My husband appeared ten minutes later, having driven over with the spare key, and stayed with me until the doctor came to listen to what had happened. I left soon after still feeling the ghost of needles in my neck. It was a humbling, mildly torturous head-game experiment that is not something I'm ever eager to repeat...

...but I'll use it in a story someday. Just see if I don't.