Mitchmas (29), Part 3: Elizabeth’s B-day
On Thursday, September 3rd 2026, after my coworker Elizabeth had left for the day, our other coworkers, Kaylee and Emily, and a couple others, decorated Elizabeth's classroom for her 37th birthday. We had accidentally gotten 50th birthday branded stuff and so we decided to commit to the bit. Immediately after we had finished I went down to the studio to get my car checked out (it would not be enough as you will see in the following installment), and then I went to Kroger to get a cake.
Paige and my refrigerator is not big enough for the cake and the rest of our necessities, so I drove to Emily's apartment. When I got there I said hi to all three of Emily's kids, two of whom I had met before. Before I left, the youngest one, who I had never met before, gave me a kiss on the cheek which was really cute! The next day, Elizabeth's birthday, after work I recorded Bad Days 2, and then drove to Emily's girlfriend, Kira’s house. Emily, Kaylee, Kira and I hung out for about 30 minutes, before it was time for us to drive to Smash Park (which I hilariously thought was a rage room). The day before I had asked Emily for the address for Smash Park before I asked for her address. I ended up being 15 minutes late because I drove to Emily's apartment instead of Smash Park, because it was the last address in our text thread.
When I arrived at Smash Park, I was greeted by Elizabeth, her two kids, and her boyfriend Joel. Afterwards we found a table and ordered our dinner. Everyone laughed when I got ready to order because I had to order off the kids menu. Seriously, it needs to be the kids AND the ‘tism menu! Anyway, the workers saw the cake that we brought in and gave her a second dessert so we sang happy birthday twice.
The second time, with the cake I brought we put a 50 candle on the cake. “ WHATS WITH ALL THE 50s?” She exclaimed.
“Oh,” I said, “50 years ago was when the vampire bit you!” Yeah I’m fully convinced Elizabeth is a vampire, but that’s another story.
After dinner we went to the arcade. Everybody got those Photo Booth strips with Elizabeth individually. After we played the arcade games we went outside and played a couple of different games. I played ping pong with Elizabeth and I was really really bad at it. Then I played that ring toss game with the little metal rings on the strings with the hooks on the wall. I, of course, broke the string by accident.
This Mitchmas 3 parter has functioned a little differently than previous years. There is one reason that will not be important until next year, but presently, I wrote them like this for a separate reason. As I’ve mentioned before for obvious reasons, Covid-19, had lasting ramifications outside of the actual pandemic. The biggest impact on my life was that my “sisters” and I got stuck in this weird limbo between our childhood and our adulthood. And almost as soon as life unpaused, August got pregnant Arden and Marshall got engaged/married and I started dating Paige. In other words, because of the speed at which everything happened, it felt like three years of character development happened in basically the course of six months (if you count, Arden and Marshall’s engagement and private elopement as a singular event) and that put a lot of strain on our friend group.
While everything with the Andersons has leveled out (and honestly things are better with them than they ever have been), my confidence growing up was tethered to my relationship with them. We're still tight, but we're now able to have our own lives. And because we are not around each other as much as we used to be, for the last few years I have not been able to unlock my full confidence unless I'm around the Anderson women, Paige, Noah, recently Elena, and my family.
Another thing that was a little stunted by Covid was my mission to make friends. I met Noah at the end of 2019 and while Noah is one of my best friends in the entire world now, at the time the intention was for him to be a starting point. Not that I wouldn't pursue our friendship to the fullest, but I would use our friendship as a template for making friends post Arden’s initial move to Colorado. When Covid hit Noah and I (and yes, we have talked about this) got comfortable in our friendship. Which isn’t a bad thing; again I love Noah. But I have still wanted a friend group (and ideally more than one) so that my confidence can be more consistent across the board. What I’m saying is that as we celebrated Elizabeth’s birthday, I thought about how thankful I am for this group and all the people that make my life greattastic!
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