They Say It's My Birthday

Well, as I look at my FaceBook page, it certainly looks as if something's going on. I guess it's my birthday. I am amazed at the number of wonderful birthday wishes and that some people have actually taken the time to write something personal.

Lovely. Just lovely. Thank you all so very much.

I've also gotten a few phone calls this morning - people want to know what I'm doing on my birthday.

Well, it's Saturday. Ms. Conroy is off this weekend (It's her birthday tomorrow.). She's still a Good Roman Catholic Girl who grew up in the 50's and 60s.  Saturday is for chores.

So, we're shampooing the rugs today.

Yes way.

She's Irish. 4,000 years of slavery and all that.  To quote Yeats, "Being Irish, she has an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustains her through temporary periods of joy."

And then, we head out to purchase our joint birthday present: a wicker entertainment amoire for the living room to replace the big, heavy, bulky one we got third-or-fourth hand about 10 years ago when it really didn't matter because this was just a vacation home.

We sorta kinda like this one for $275, but there's another one that's a little lighter in color (honey) and doesn't have the slots for DVDs but it does have a swivel base for the TV and looks like lots of storage space that's selling for about $195.  

We'll have to see when we get to the store over in Georgetown and I get to touch it and feel it and imagine it in my living room.

Ms. Conroy will sit in one of the chairs, a lovely scowl on her face, reading something on her Kindle. Every once in a while, she'll raise her head in response to something I've said or a question I've asked and say, "What?..... Well, get the one you really like."

And then she'll ask, "Are we done yet?"

I'm trying to convince her to go out to dinner tonight but if not tonight then definitely tomorrow when it's HER birthday. We can't have too much excitement on one day, you see. Shampooing floors and purchasing an amoire all on one day is really quite enough.  Well, for that Irish lass, at least.

There'll be church in the morning (I'm preaching) and then breakfast and then, depending on the weather, either some yard work or a movie, and then, if we haven't gone out to dinner tonight, I'll try a full court press to head over to one of our favorite restaurants in Rehoboth Beach - other than Dos Locos, of course - for some fabulous fish.

A beautiful vase of flowers just arrived to brighten up the living room, which prompts me to say the only real whimsically philosophical thing I have to say about birthdays:

Whatever shape or form - FaceBook, text, IM, phone call, flowers, chocolates, an actual old-fashioned birthday card in the mail or a lovely email card from Hallmark or Jacqui Lawson - it's really just lovely to be remembered on your birthday.

I'm grateful for another year of life, for health and happiness, a lovely, comfortable home with a magnificent view of Rehoboth Bay, a wonderful family, three pups who entertain us daily and a large circle of friends scattered like wheat around the country who all come together to make the nutritious bread of our lives.

Oh, and chocolate.

Life is good, and the rugs are clean.

Now, if the Red Sox can have a winning good season.............