Birthday Blog

43 years later, I guess I've done okay for myself. Birthday breakdown:

6:00 a.m.: girlfriend delivers coffee in bed (from Coffee Times, highly recommended if you find yourself driving on Speedway in the vicinity of Country Club).

7:00 a.m.: officemates show up with orange juice and champagne, respectively, and mimosas commence.

9:00 a.m.: meet my son at home and take off for Mt. Lemmon.

9:45 a.m.: arrive at Molino Canyon to find next to no water, but a few tiny tadpoles save the day.

Birthday tadpoles.

11:30 a.m.: son serves lunch of homemade coconut shrimp with (blue) lime sauce.

12:00 p.m.: first batch of cookies come out of oven.

1:30 p.m.: son accompanies me to gym.

2:30 p.m.: frozen pea application; SportsCenter.

6:00 p.m.: Girlfriend, both kids, and I hit Barrio. Tacos and beer.

sometime after that: happy collapse.

Bring on the 44th year.

Wrapup

I suppose it could have been much, much worse, but the birthday balance sheet teetered a tad more to the crap side of things than I would have preferred. My aging grandfather wound up in the hospital yesterday after what was supposed to be a fairly routine artery-stenting procedure revealed that his femoral arteries have completely shut down and his kidneys aren't far behind, a condition that would have been prevented had his totally swamped old-people doctor in Mesa bothered to check the pulses in his legs a couple of years ago.

I mean, for fuck's sake, the vet checks my dog's femoral pulses every time I take her in for a checkup; would this not seem to be a fairly obvious first thing to poke at on an old dude who has chronic intense leg pain and, oh, a couple siblings who have lost limbs to poor circulation?

There might be a metaphor for socialized medicine in here someplace, but probably not. He got in to see doctors without any trouble, and everything was covered through some combination of Medicare, the VA, and private insurance. But it wasn't until he left the giant senior citizen metropolis that is Mesa for the summer and called a different doctor in tiny tiny Pagosa Springs, Colorado, that the lightbulb went on next to the simplest possibility on the list. And now, despite having a mind that is still razor sharp despite pushing ninety, it would appear that his body's trashed.

Fuck.

Oh, and speaking of the dog, who is also aging poorly, the new med that is intended to flush excess ammonia from her system works really well. Unfortunately, it works so well that she flushed said system by shitting up and down the hall in the middle of the night. The poo trail suggests that she tried to make it to the door, but failed rather spectacularly. Happy birthday, Boltgirl!

On the plus side, I did enjoy a lovely dinner courtesy of one of the kids, good company courtesy of the whole family and a family friend, had ice cream out the wazoo, and managed to win at cards for the first time in forever. Nothing caught on fire and nobody died (not yet, anyway), so we'll call it a wash and hope for less excitement next year.

One More Thing

Happy birthday to me. I am old!

Public Service Announcement

Today is Homer's 45th birthday, so go right over there and wish him 45 more!

Grandma Turns 90

We interrupt today's political blatherings to wish Grandma a happy 90th birthday. Which was actually yesterday, but I did remember to call and the card got there on time, so everything's good.
















Grandma at 90, in my dad's kitchen.


















Grandma at 6, on a cake.

Grandma is still undecided about which way to go in the Illinois primary. She's leaning toward Obama but still considering Clinton; she likes Edwards but thinks he doesn't have a prayer; she's not overly enthused by the possibility of Obama going with Webb as a running mate given his forcefulness and the way Cheney has redefined the vice-presidency. I gave her a copy of The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State and she loves it. She's a big Jefferson fan. Hell, she's old enough to have sat at his knee taking notes. No, not really.

90 years, three sons, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren later, she's still terrorizing the choir and PTO at St. Joe's on a regular basis. We will chat about the developing presidential race next week. Love you, Grandma! Rock on!

Birthday Chaos

Oh, the day started promisingly enough, Coffee Times coffee in hand, annual pass to the Catalinas stuck to the windshield, all ready for a drive up the mountain with stops at various vista points to play in the water that's still bravely holding out against the sun and evaporation.

Stream bubbling past a tree growing between granite boulders in Molino Canyon.

A few remnant puddles stranded high up on the tops of the boulders on either side of the stream were indicators of the awesome torrent that rushed through here last week. Today it was a lovely cool gurgle perfect for wading and splashing.

The next stop was a couple thousand feet higher, up in the ponderosa forest near Bear Canyon. The slope of the streambed here is gentle, creating a wide channel with interesting sandbars, meandering among the pines. Although it was reasonably early in the morning, I didn't see much in the way of wildlife; a large orange dragonfly buzzing the surface of the pool on the left side of the sandbar and a lone waterbug doing the backstroke were about it.

Cool, shimmery water pooling near Bear Canyon.

A lovely morning. Until I walked back to the BoltMobile, at which point I noticed a large puddle that definitely was not there when I pulled off the road. A glance at the radiator and finger-poke into the puddle confirmed that my truck had decided to celebrate my birthday by spewing coolant like an excited and, let's admit it, probably non-Cub outfielder with a bottle of champagne after Game 7.

This meant making the 45-minute drive back down the mountain and into town with the heat on full blast to keep the engine temperature needle just below the red. What's open on Saturday? Why, Pep Boys (shudder), of course. Jesus.

Boltgirl's day takes a turn for the worse.

Four hours and $416 later, I had a shiny new radiator and a big-ass hole in my credit card. And just after finally paying off the summer train tickets last week. Happy birthday to me! Luckily, I have good friends who are happy to drive across town to rescue me and take me shopping to make me feel better.

New Merrell Chameleon Webs make everything sunnier.

So all in all, not a bad day. Not the cheapest day I have ever had, but hey. Forty is better than dead.

Birthday

Today I turn 39, round about 3:12 pm Illinois time. Birthdays stopped being a big deal a while ago. I'm not really concerned about adding years to my age; it clearly beats the alternative. The part-time housemate is taking me, the partner, and the kids to Vivace tonight in honor of both birthdays (the partner's birthday is tomorrow). Crab-stuffed chicken breast and tiramisu, here I come. It will be a welcome and (hopefully) mellow denouement to a draining week.

I certainly never expected this level of grief. It's on par with how wrecked I felt after my grandfather passed.

Anyway. Moving on. The upside is having had contact with people I haven't talked to for 20 years. Feeling a sense of community after so much time even when it's from far, far away and delivered by pixels on a screen is a fairly awesome experience.

Well, hell. It's my birthday. I might just possibly have ice cream for lunch, because I can.

Birthday Girl Shout-Out

Happy birthday to the girl dog! She is 10 today. Way back when, I threw her a party for her 4th birthday. We had 14 dogs wearing party hats in the back yard. This year will be a bit more subdued affair, mainly because I forgot about it until just now. Perhaps she will get some extra chicken with her valley fever meds tonight.

Happy birthday, sweet pup. Here's hoping to at least a couple more.