surgery... and the teenager in my house

For those that knew I was undergoing surgery, everything went fine & I am well on the road to recovery. It's been a full week now, and I can type (though excruciatingly slowly) with both hands now, and am down to a single painkiller before bed. My post-op appointment isn't until next Monday so I could still use a prayer or two that the biopsy for Herman does in fact come back negative, (as expected) but for the most part I'm just working on slowly taking over housework again. Loading the dishwasher was slow but doable this morning, but I can't lift anything larger than a half-empty teakettle with my left arm yet so I am still relying heavily on the kids for most things... including brushing my own hair at this point. How humbling, to need HELP with daily hygeine routines!  And now for something completely different... I asked the little man (can I still call him that, seeing as he's officially 4" taller than me?) about a birthday party about 2 months ago, and have double-checked with him 3 or 4 times since then. Each time, he's said he really didn't want one. So I finally dropped it, and figured we'd just skip the whole "party thing" this year & check back with him for next year. Three weeks ago I gave him "one last chance" to change his mind, just in case being in Youth Group with a new bunch of kids had changed his mind, but he was adamant - no party. This afternoon, (yep it's 5 days before his birthday!) he came bounding out of his room to say that he'd figured out what he wanted to do for his birthday. My initial response - and possibly the more mature - was to tell him no, because he'd insisted he didn't want one even when asked "one last time." But since it IS his 13th & he is usually a fairly "low maintenance" kiddo who rarely asks for favors I gave him the benefit of the doubt and see what he had in mind before taking out his spleen for changing his mind last-minute. It turns out that all he wants is his two best friends to sleep over and have a lightsaber battle in the yard, and then watch Star Wars games & play some X-Box... with snacks of course. He wants black paper plates & cups and things, a handful of lightstick goodies from the dollar-store, and he asked if they could make their own pizzas... and he insisted that he WANTS to do all of the food preparation! (I think he wants to show off his "skills" to the guys) With a response like that, how could we have refused? So it looks like I will be planning a VERY low-key "Nothing too little-kiddy Mom!" party for three, for next weekend OR the weekend after that, depending on when both other boys are free. I don't mind... I'm just reminded of a few last-minute doozies my sisters & I dropped on Mom & Dad, and realizing... it's started. (sigh)