THE ARROGANCE OF ASSUMING INTEREST. MY LIFE LIST.

THE THURSDAY:
The girls and I spent the day in a tizzy.
· Doctor's office for still-sick-after-4-weeks Annika
· Social Security office (I decided after 3 1/2 years of marriage that I should spend two hours replacing "Johnson" with "Owen”)
· Pricking Place to get my blood drawn
· P.O. to mail Ebay stuff
· Home to skimp on naps
· Off again to pick up John, then off to Aldi
· Visit to eye doctor to fill out driver's license renewal form
· Looong, blindfolded ride so that John could pick up a birthday present
· Then zipadeedoo on home to unpack
· Zzzzzzzzz

I know that some moms love to ram around every day, but, golly...

THE FRIDAY:
I've always loved my TaxbirthDay; it's better than being born on the nondescript 14th or 16th, and it provides a bit of government glamour (tongue stuck to cheek). I was also born on Easter Day, but that skitters around from year to year.

Birthday history: Instead of turning 20 in 1999, I decided in dread and fright to reverse time and became 18 instead. These glorious, Peter Pan celebrations continued until my Sweet 16 birthday party in 2001. I then got married and have partially accepted aging, so it is only weakly that I announce my 12th birthday this year.

I continue to work toward not simply resigning myself to time but celebrating it, trying to develop the good that comes only with age while jointly keeping what adults often discard when focused solely on matters of consequence (like furniture reupholstering and mortgage payments).

Plus, I am a sentimental fool.
The past haunts me. The past quiets me.
By turns, it even comforts me, but it should not be enshrined in a steel-trap mind.

Onward, ho, to birthday #27!

THE GIFTS:
John was gone on my birthday, but he gave me choice gifts the night before, and I enjoyed them in his absence. Gifts aren't better than John, but if he must be gone, they're an acceptable balm.

FOOD & DRINK--dark & light:
· a bar of dark chocolate with a scrap of "Astrophel and Stella" enclosed by the manufacturer
· a glass of Lindeman's framboise

MUSIC--dark, light, & neither:
· Alisdair Robert's newest c.d., composed of darker-toned, traditional songs than Farewell Sorrow is. (There's no "The Whole House is Singing" equivalent on this one.)
· Donovan's greatest hits on vinyl
· Iron + Wine's "Our Endless Numbered Days," also on vinyl

BOOKS of all hues (many thanks to Record Theater’s 70% off section):
- The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, (Joseph Bedier’s edition, translated by Hilaire Belloc and Paul Rosenfield)
- All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (I've never read anything of his, but a lecture I heard about his works piqued my interest.) From the inside jacket cover of All the Pretty Horses:

In the end, seeking a life that in mid-century America no longer exists, John Grady Cole becomes steeped in the sort of wisdom that comes only of belief and loss and excruciating pain. Though Indian bands and horses and cattle are still scattered across the plains, the country itself is bisected by highways and an inevitable future in which all he holds sacred will fade into air. A novel about childhood passing, along with innocence and an American age, this is a grand love story and an education in responsibility and revenge and survival.

- A Cry Like a Bell by Madeleine L’Engle, a collection of sometimes stark poetry on "human struggle and God’s grace” shaped around Biblical stories
- The O. Henry Prize Stories: I’ve loved O. Henry since buying an antique set of his complete works when I was about 14 or so for the (then) staggeringly large sum of $20.00. I spent all summer reading them while basking in the sun. This collection is comprised of the 2003 winners of the O. Henry prize.
- The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, a book I’ve never heard of but which seems to hold great promise (not to stake all on a jacket blurb, but... "...into that world comes Tristan Smith, a malformed, heroically willful, and unforgivingly observant child. Tristan's life includes adventure and loss, political intrigue, and a bizarre stardom in the Voorstand Sirkus, where animals talk and human performers die real deaths. The result is a visionary picaresque, staggering in its inventions, spellbinding in its suspense, and unabashedly moving.")
- The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett, which will undoubtedly be delightful

The unexpectedness of gifts is what I like best, particularly of books that I never knew existed or whose existence I'd forgotten.
John gets a whole line of shiny, silver stars for this year’s pile of gifts.
His perfect and seamless friendship, though, takes the cake.