When it comes to birthdays… oh, what I wouldn’t do to be a vampire again

NOTE:  This is from November 4 2012, 4 days after my 51st birthday.  But I recently found some artwork I wanted to include, and seeing that it’s almost Halloween…

A few days ago I celebrated my birthday.  Well, I’m not sure I’d say celebrate—it was a ‘work from home’ day for me, and I had some leftover chicken for lunch and a bowl of cereal for dinner.  The day before was much nicer though, some lovely friends took me out to lunch & got me a giant cookie afterwards. 

Thank you Dani, Gwen, Kathy & Jamie!

I got a nice assortment of birthday cards in the mail too, a couple of them even came with music and you can never go wrong with the Starship Enterprise.  I especially liked how a couple were for people with Halloween birthdays like mine (and wait you didn’t know that?  I thought I told everybody).  But truth be told, as much as I appreciate the ones I got this year and every year, I still miss the ones from my dad more than anything.

I’m talking about the hand-drawn cards my Dad made for me on my birthdays, which were far better than anything that Hallmark or American Greetings could do.

Besides his job in coal shaft construction and playing music on the weekends, Dad enjoyed drawing too.

While he drew birthday cards for everyone in the family, I got a big kick out of how he always portrayed me as a vampire. 

That’s my mom holding a newborn Doug with the caption “Look Don… it’s another boy—and he was born with two teeth!” 

(Click on image to enlarge)

Here’s another “Vampire Doug” card, with me going to the Blood Bank to make some withdrawals (naturally)!

         

Here’s one of my favorites that Dad made for my older brother Duke on his 16th birthday in 1975 (and boy did he get things right on the money here!)

       

This one was for our baby sister Courtney, who turned 4 on July 2, 1979.  Mom liked to remind us that July 4 may be celebrated as Independence Day, but the actual date of said event was July 2!

And here’s one Dad made for my younger brother Steve (again, click on any of these images to enlarge):

 

Dad captured our little sister & both of my brothers so well, with Duke on his academic soapbox (when he wasn’t chowing down) and Huckleberry Steve and his love of all those darn critters— both before and after they became road-kill. 

And then there was me, always with the fangs!

Well, when you’re wearing a set of pointy teeth and carrying your sister’s Barbie Makeup Head around in the middle of July, what can you expect?