The Birthday: continued

I like my birthday to last for a month or so. Adding in the pre-birthday gift opening, I am approaching the three-week mark. Last night was part of the continuing celebration. A friend invited me over for dinner in her flat. When I showed up other friends were there and falafel was frying on the stove. We watched The Simpson –which made it feel like a real Sunday night – and feasted.

Under some pretext we headed to the courtyard where I was surprised to see a triceratops piñata hanging. (My parents have given me a piñata every year but one for my birthday since I moved away from home. This year was no exception.) A sturdy beast, it took us over a half hour to smash it. At one point, a neighbor came out on her porch. Dressed in her dressing gown, I expect her to yell at us to be quiet, but she didn’t. She wanted to know what we were doing & my Serbian companion explained. (My piñata-related vocabulary is sorely lacking.) She wished me happy birthday and enjoyed watching our long, but not futile to destroy the orange dinosaur. Finally, it broke, showering the ground with gelt, candy necklaces, bubbles, jelly beans, pencils, and those capsules that you put in water to watch grow into sponges shaped like animals. Fabulous.

And some cake-eating and a game of Apples to Apples, in which I triumphed, ended the night.

The host of the party had not yet finished my birthday gift, so the month o' birthday is not yet over.