Saturday, August 9, 2014

A Milestone

As of today -- I have turned the corner into a new decade -- this is my seventieth birthday, and I have very little vision of what that means -- sixty-ish, yes; eighty-ish, yes; but SEVENTY??? 

Partly I want to ask, "HOW did this happen?"  but I know the answer to that one well enough.

I have enjoyed a day of almost entirely untrammeled self-indulgence (well, it's a start....) -- up and a long phone conversation, very affable, with the Father of My Children -- then rushed off to get my haircut -- home and met my neighbour between our two houses and heard him apologize that he hadn't got my lawn cut for me before I cut it myself, earlier this week (it looks a bit like a kindergartener's self-hair-cut, but hey)...then I chased down my weedkiller/fertilizer technician and made him sort out the invoices that he had put in the wrong mailboxes...then I repelled the earnest efforts of the Jehovah's Witnesses (ah, Saturdays in the summer)...then I went to the Library and played on their computers and handed in one book and took out four more, all slender and non-challenging... then I did a little reconnaissance on the dinner-venue for this evening...then stopped at a cafe for a mid-afternoon treat, came home, and in due course got myself out of the house again for supper with 2/3 of my children and 2/2 of my grandchildren, one DIL, one SIL, and the co-grandparents of one of the little granddaughters.
Dinner was Italian, in a right-sized private dining-room where the granddaughters could hoot and holler and play tag around the table when they were tired of eating (Italian food which they both like, and watching the 20-month-old smack the table and demand more OLIVES was a highlight of the evening)...so after wonderful charcuterie and wine and pizzas and pastas and -- for me -- praline gelato in a bowl about as big as the average washbasin... and lovely cards and presents ... "and so home," like Samuel Pepys...

Tomorrow I'm preaching and presiding again for the first time in a couple of months; must look out a clean black shirt etc. and make sure my vestments are packed and in the car.

Time to take one more look over the sermon notes...I feel very very "guest-preacher-ish" this evening and the sermon is perhaps somewhat idiosyncratic also... But I don't think I'll do them any harm.

2 comments:

Jan said...

Congratulations and happy birthday from another of that age but an Aussie. We had a big group of family and friends at the local pizzeria which is just down the road from my former home of many years.

I laughed at your comment about more olives. Some years ago a group of family was dining as an authentic curry place run by Indians. My granddaughter then about 15 months or so enjoyed prawns when she saw everyone else eating them, but her favourite was a particular curry and she had several helpings. The waster came past and tried to take her dish. "No! More! " So she had more.

A few months later we were all there again. As I walked in the door, she came running and shouting, "Grandma! I a big girl now. I use the potty." At this, everyone in the place fell about laughing and her mother was very embarrassed.

So you have more joys to come.

Crimson Rambler said...

dear Jan, that's just about the stage of my little granddaughters too...don't you love restaurants where they take children, and their antics, and their proclamations, in their stride? I think happily of our waiter who most carefully checked the dining-room door before he came roaring in with more food, not once did he 'clunk' or step on a little girl!