Tuesday - 221st

A momentous, memorable day! First the weird: 

I did not go upstairs to bed until close to 3 a.m. It took me that long to gather documents the credit card company needed to believe that I was really me. Apparently buying a couple of dresses and tshirts for my grandkids put me in the category of a heighten fraud alert and from there, I spun down a rabbit hole so deep that I am told it will take many days to clear the card for action. I understand their protective stance, but given that I am a rather stable, no changes, same type of purchases, from same vendors kind of card user, I cannot understand the security risk at all. Time to dig out my old dusty other credit card. Oh, I am tired! Late hours are an Ed thing, not a Nina thing.

The upside of such late night shenanigans is that at the tolling of the midnight hour, I get to wish Ed a very happy birthday and he gets to wish me a very happy anniversary.

It's our round number day! 10/20/2020 (In America, we put the month down first). Ed is 70. And, we have been together 15 years.

How well I remember the day our online exchange turned into the real deal! He picked me up in his rusted out tiny Geo Metro -- a faded red with pink stripes -- and we went for a drive. To an apple orchard, then to watch the ducks and geese fly in where the river meets the lake, then home. 

We've been together ever since.

In all our years, we've had only one blow-up and it was in fact a fairly recent thing -- last November -- and we were both deeply at fault. 

 I live with a person who never spouts off criticism or passes judgment on the choices I make or others make in life, a person who loves animals and nature without reservation, a guy who never wastes, never spends money on needless stuff, a guy who thinks deeply before he speaks and who is possibly the most widely read person I know. A man who uses his hands as well as he uses his brain. An older dude who never met a child he felt close to, until he met my grandkids. Fifteen years of a beautiful life.

So you can understand perhaps why we would take this day, this double anniversary/birthday seriously.

It begins with me reminding Ed a few days ago that he cannot do as he has done before -- haul me off to hunt together for a card. He's on his own. The internet has to be his friend. He agonizes over the choices, but I offer no help, except to say that I prefer his own words to prefab commercial writing.

Then I ask him for his favorite foods for the day. Oh, the terrible indecision as to what I should prepare! But in the end, we will eat what is truly our own best discovery -- a home made pizza. 

 First though, a morning walk for me. To feed the animals and to take in the season's gifts.

[There will be 15 photos here today and I will admit at the outset to uniformly adding warm tones to all of them. Because that's the way the world appeared to me today.]

Breakfast. Happy birthday, to you!

 (He looks on with a smile at the card Snowdrop made for him. He wont pay attention to any cards from big people, but kids -- well, they hold a special spot...)

Happy anniversary to both of us...

And now I get on with baking a cake. This is an easy choice: I pick the last of the rhubarb and bake a rhubarb-almond-yogurt thing he likes.

And even though it is not warm outside, nor is it sunny, we do take the time to walk along our favorite county park trail.

(Our selfie...)

 

A celebration geared to our own beloved routines, foods, habits. 

 

 

 

Seventy years, fifteen years. Happy years indeed.

With so much love...