The journal entry from my birthday on May 10th 1984 simply reads, "It's going to be 82 degrees today!!". Well guess what, little one; fast forward 27 years and you will find yourself with a 94 degree day with a central air unit that decided not to work and sweat running down your cleavage for no good reason.
The moment the kids woke up, they hurried me into my sewing room and insisted I stay there for a second. They came back with two wrapped gifts that they eagerly opened with me. Thanks to a super thoughtful friend-you know who you are- they felt awesome about giving me some gorgeous shell earrings, two bags of cotton candy, a bag of Twizzler nibs (which may or may not be stuck in my teeth at this very moment) and a mint chocolate bar. Someone knows me well. Last week Ronan kept dropping unsolicited hints that went something like this, "I'm just going to give you one hint, OK? Coooo-tttt-oooonn Caaaa-nnnnndy. OK? That's all I'm going to tell you." Sheesh. Don't ever share close, personal secrets with that kid. A phone call from Afghanistan rounded out my morning and now here I sit trying to decide if I should tackle all the little responsibilities I have today, or should I just be decadent and read my Kindle and not take a shower. Yes. Yes, I just made my decision.
All this birthday talk reminds me of a cringe-worthy gift I gave Skip our first year of marriage when he hit the age of 23. Somehow we were able to stay in a hotel (a parental gift? I can't recall) and had some friends come and hang out and swim. Later it was time for Skip to open the many gifts I lay before him, and I picked some doozies. We were both in college with no money, but we sure liked candles so who *wouldn't* want about seven individually wrapped cheap-o unscented candles to beautify our basement housing with the corn and punkins on the linoleum? I'll tell you who wouldn't. Probably a YOUNG MAN. Also I was able to procure a special kitchen item that we use to this day. Skip loved ice cream back in the day before the evils of dairy and its consequences were brought to our attention. I just so happened to have held onto a SteinMart gift card from our wedding. Are you leaning forward now? I had just enough to purchase a zany ice cream scooper with an ice cream man's head on the handle....and batteries that allowed him to call out "Ice Cream! ding-a-ling-aling" whenever it was tipped down ready to do it's scooping job. And this is where I cringe. But I have to say, our kids love to use it and maybe there was a very wise, big picture prompting in me that knew this was going to be a coveted heirloom. I think I have gotten better at giving him gifts over the past many years together. He'll have to be the judge on that one.
So. I am now 36 years old. If you were to investigate my google searches this morning you would find "Why do I have stark blonde hair in my eyebrows?" The word on the street (the world wide web street) is that it is graying hair and just to deal with it and color those brows in. But it's not gray, it's blonde and pops up overnight like someone who has had a horrific trauma and they wind up with a strand of solid white in their locks. So I'm not convinced and I don't feel old at all. It feels like yesterday that some big lump of a boy told me at 7th grade recess that I had a unibrow. He was right. Hence, I went home and took a razor and went straight down the middle of my uni with it. Now look at me, trying to get that youthful hairiness back. Well. Not so fast.
The journal entry from May 11 1985 reads "The banquet was fun! But we had to bear with a very, very bad storm." Goodness, I hope that May 11 2012 will be more low key and safer than that.
Here is perhaps a sign of my age. I am hopeless with technology, and have lots of old photos I have tried to scan and post here, to no avail. I simply can't make it happen. My vast viewing audience was so very close to seeing me with my curly, carrot colored hair and thick, dark eyebrows. Two of them.
