vignettes from a birthday weekend

Sunshine goes to your head. It confuses your understanding of reality. It shouts splendid messages of spring and warmth and blooms and outdoor pleasure. In other words, it can be very misleading.

Breakfast in the sun room had, if you can believe it, too much sun! We ate in the front room and caught just dappled streams hitting this flower or that cup...





My little girl is in town already and I was to meet her and her sister for a first of the season outdoor market. I revved up rosie and scootered to town and only then did it hit me -- it really isn't all that warm... In fact, did we dip below 32?

Still, the market is vibrant and colorful -- you can't keep people indoors on a day like this. The winter has been long, the appetite for an outdoor stroll -- insatiable.

I didn't buy much. Cheese curds for my guy back home. But hey, you never really buy much the first market. You savor. We savored.





And after, we needed a warm cup of tea to chase away the chill.





They had errands to run and I returned home, to finish fussing over the farmhouse and, too, to pick up stuff at our local store. What stuff? Well, for one thing, Ed asked me if I wanted a birthday card. There is so much sweetness in that offer! The anti-holiday man, the one who most likely has never ventured into a card store in his life took me along to help guide him through the process.





(He did ask the clerk how come they had so many more birthday cards than, say, divorce cards. The poor clerk rushed to find him some divorce cards... only they're not happy cards -- she tells him anxiously. He thanks her for her effort and goes back to the task at hand.)

We spend a lot of time looking at cards. You pick one -- he'll say. No no, it has to come from you -- I retort. He picks one. Puts it back. Picks another. Goes back to the first. Changes aisles. Comes back and starts all over again. Delightful. Totally, heart warmingly delightful.

In the late afternoon I bake a breakfast cake (my birthday is really on Sunday, but we're having the celebratory dinner today. With a brunch tomorrow to finish off the weekend before the Chicago pair sets off for home).





And finally, we, the six of us, go for our Sardine dinner. It's a lively place with terrific food and enough informality that it can even keep an Ed happy.














Happy. That's the key word.

What makes you happy? An image of love? Of your two daughters in love?









Yes, for me that.

In a few minutes I'll be sixty. My girls (and their mates) installed a system of music at the farmhouse  where I can listen to my records, my music, my world of memories. Amazing.

Nearly sixty. Wow. I made it there. Incredible.