NASCAR!!

I told Vince that I was going to have a wine and cheese party for my birthday. I had forgotten that he wasn't a drinker until I said it out loud. "Hmmm. Or maybe not," I added. "I wanted to do a poker tournament, so everyone would be moving around and have something to talk about and a way to interact."

"How about a NASCAR party?" he asked. I laughed and that settled it.

"What do we do for a NASCAR party?" I asked.

"We can race remote control cars around a track. We'll have brackets and give a trophy to the winner."

After this initial conversation, it spiraled out of control. We spent days looking for the right remote control cars to race. I sent out a NASCAR appropriate evite. The next morning, my uncle called. "I love the idea!" he said. "And I know just what to make. You need to deep fry some twinkies! It sounds disgusting and it is actually pretty terrible, but they taste great. It is quintessential fair food. Perfect for a NASCAR party."

When Lesha saw the evite she demanded, "You have to make people come in NASCAR attire! And I bet Ty will grow a mustache for it." In fact, we had two people grow mustaches. One of them was my little brother, and I have to admit, if I didn't know him, that mustache would probably make me cross the street if I saw him coming toward me.

Fortunately, recipes for deep fried twinkies are readily available on line. And they are a snap to make, just make sure you happen to have an enormous deep fryer on hand, which fortunately, some of our friends did!

Vince went to the thrift store and picked our trophies to give away. On one of excursions to Target we found a toy that I would never imagined a use for, besides a NASCAR party, but that was so ridiculous, I knew I had to have it. It is a plastic, battery-operated log. On the log are plastic bottles and soup can. There is a bright orange gun with an infrared beam and when you shoot the gun and hit the bottles the log shoots them off so it appears as though you shot off the bottle. RIDICULOUS. And so much fun. I felt like Annie Oakley in the living room.

Lesha showed up with a race car cake, complete with a black sugar race track. My other siblings "wrapped" my gift in a Styrofoam cooler with the words "Get 'er done" on it. In it the packed a 40 of Bud light, oil, an oil funnel, some toilet paper, a chocolate bar, and a Cars Birthday card. And because they know me well, they tucked a gift certificate to an independent bookstore into the card.

In short, the only thing that kept it from feeling like the birthday of a 9 year-old was that no one received gift bags, and there was quite a lot of beer consumed. I always hated the saying, "It's never too late for a second childhood", but I guess it is true after all!