Hello! I'm here with the weird vibes for my own birthday party.

Feel free to sing the party pooper song if you must.

Over the weekend, we hosted a few family members at our house for a casual pizza get-together. My parents have been divorced since I was very young, and while all parties are long past any drama, it’s rare these days that people from both sides actually get to mingle in the same place. As Matt and I anticipate adding another member to our own nuclear family, we’re trying to be more thoughtful about creating opportunities for different combinations of family to gather so that the ice is already re-broken by the time he and I are too exhausted by new parenthood to coordinate and make things cozy.

Soooooo, we planned a pizza night and figured we would see who would show up.

While we were missing a few important faces, we ended up with a pretty full house, giving me the perfect excuse to take a field trip to Trader Joe’s to load up on fall snacks for a pre-pizza spread. (Side note: do not try to convince me that there is anything better than their Maple Leaf Cookies. You can’t.) And since my birthday was just a few days away—as you’re reading this, thanks to the magic of internet time travel, my birthday is actually today—my family also came together to arrange some mellow celebrations for me. Even thirty years into being a child of divorce, it’s hard to shake the awkwardness of blending my worlds—but it’s equally hard to shake how special it makes me feel to be in a room filled with that combination.

A fourth-grade dance recital or a thirty-third birthday pizza party at my house—as long as I have people from both sides of my family there, it gives me the same little rush.

Naturally, my dog Irv was also present for this event.

Irv is a very specific kind of dog and he experienced the evening in a very specific kind of way. Let me give you a brief recap of the night from his perspective (we are extremely co-dependent, so I feel confident that I can express his point-of-view to a great degree of accuracy):

1. People I love are here! This is so cool!

2. Everyone is chatting and having a good time! And they’re paying so much attention to me. What did I do to deserve this pure joy?!

3. Snacks! I love snacks! Maybe people will share with me.

4. And now there’s a cake? WOAH. This might just be the day my parents discover that chocolate won’t actually kill me and decide to give me a bite. I will sit very close to the table with my biggest golden retriever smile and wait.

5. HOLY SH*T NOW THEY ARE SINGING AND WEARING HATS AND I AM GETTING OVERWHELMED.

6. I MUST RETREAT TO MY HIDING SPOT UNDER THE COFFEE TABLE.

Because Irv is a dog who relies primarily on basic instincts to direct his behavior, he did retreat immediately to his coffee table hideout, where he stayed for the rest of the evening. (It’s worth noting that my family had brought plastic kazoos to accompany their birthday song for me, only adding to his terror. Kazoos or not, he probably would have done the same thing.)

When everyone left a few hours later—thankfully leaving behind several pieces of my stepmom’s ridiculously delicious double chocolate cake—I sat quietly with Irv and saw that he’d calmed down from the stress of the singing fiasco. And as I looked into his sweet, perfect eyes (truly, someone explain to me how I’m going to find my human child’s eyes even sweeter and more perfect), I realized that, somewhere deep inside, I kind of experienced the night in a similar way.

No matter how beautifully they’re celebrated, birthdays—especially as we get older—can be kind of a weird vibe. Mine have taken on an especially weird vibe over the last few years.