birthdays

How special are birthdays to you? How long do your celebrations last? The thought of birthdays has been on my mind lately since so many of my friends and family have October birthdays. Best month of the year!

I like to celebrate for about a week. It’s only fair, sometimes my birthday falls in the middle of the week. Hard to go for dinner and drinks on a school night. I like the idea of getting together with friends and having a night out. Other than that, I don’t make too big a deal. Except for the fact that it’s my birthday. And it goes on for at least a week.

I told my mother last week not to worry that she hadn’t posted her card for me yet. That it didn’t matter if it got here on time. She begged to differ. She says it’s one of the most special days there is; after all, it’s the day she had her only daughter. From a parental point of view I get it. I understand what she’s saying. I feel the same way about BoyGenius’ birthday. He deserves to know that his birthday, the day he was born, was the best day of my life.

When it comes to my own birthday I don’t care so much. It’s no big deal. HardWorker and I decided a long time ago that we wouldn’t buy each other gifts because a) we usually buy ourselves what we want when we want it and 2) we don’t really know for sure what we would get because a) … and so on and so on. My brother SkinnyGuy used to bring me a cake at work. My brother BlueEyes used to be away a lot (flight attendant) but he would make a big deal when he came back: snacks from Japan, wine & chocolate from Germany, sweaters from Peru. My mom and dad would mail cookies to the office. That’s right. I was special. I am special.

feel the love!

So anyway, tomorrow is my birthday. I’ll be another year older but that’s a good thing (just think of the alternative!). I’ve got things I hope to accomplish in my new year. Some of them will need to be addressed this month still/already. I won’t feel any older, I don’t know if I’ll feel any wiser; but I will be glad I’m here, able to share another year with my son, my partner, my mother, my brother, my cousins and their children and grandchildren, my childhood friends, my work friends, my new friends, all their children, my online friends & their children, and all the friends I have yet to meet; allowed to enjoy the sights and sounds of the world around me; gifted with the privilege of feeling the love and joy that I have to offer bubble up inside me and vibrate out to the universe.

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conversations?

Conversations in my head
Discussing things we’ve never said

Do you have conversations in your head? Are they conversations with yourself? Mine aren’t. Not usually anyway. They are actual conversations with other, real, people. People that I never seem to find the time to actually talk to. Sometimes they are rehashing snippets of conversations we have had, or started and didn’t finish. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don’t. I get to say the things I want to say, without worrying about time constraints or little ears listening in from around the corner. The other half of the discussion doesn’t always go as I would hope. Truly. I don’t have them just say the things I want to hear. Well, okay, sometimes I do, but sometimes I am my own worst enemy playing devil’s advocate.

My biggest problem with conversations in my head is that when I actually see the person I’ve been “talking” to I can’t remember if we’ve already discussed something or not. It drives me nuts .. more nuts than I already am. The conversations in my head aren’t helpful and are a huge waste of time. Sometimes I write in my head as well. And that doesn’t work out either. Not really. There are always things that pop into my head and I know I should write it down or type it out because when I try to do it later I won’t remember what it was or exactly how I worded it. But the problem with that, of course, is that I’d be jotting stuff down all day and be getting nowhere at all with my list of chores.

How do people with children, with families, ever get to have real conversations with other people? It’s not the idle chit-chat at the grocery store or in the drive-thru. I don’t mean about what to make for dinner or how many bags of yard waste you gathered and put to the curb on the weekend. I mean a real, heart-to-heart, “these are my hopes and dreams” conversation. The kind of thing you have a best friend (or maybe a spouse) for. If  you can’t even find the time, let alone the right time, to talk to the one person that you can talk to about this stuff — then what?

Conversations in my head
Discussing things we’ve never said

a day of giving thanks?

We are celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend. We are giving thanks. Is this something that we should only do one day out of the year? No, certainly not. Do we understand this, as a people? I think we are getting closer. Many of my favourite bloggers regularly express their gratitude or thankfulness .. and also allow others to do the same. Just ask Deb at The Monster in Your Closet or Kitkatkootie at I Want a Dumpster Baby. I believe we will all get there, given time.

Every day I am thankful for family and friends. I am thankful for my homes (current and childhood). I am thankful for my education, I am thankful for my abilities and I am thankful for the gratuitous gifts that have been bestowed upon me.

As I type this I find that I keep hitting a wrong key and am often typing “thinkful” instead of “thankful.” I keep going back and correcting it but after about 5 times in a row I realized that I actually am thinkful and not just thankful. As long as I keep being thinkful about all of these things it will be easier to remember to be thankful for them.

I am thankful for my beautiful BoyGenius and when I am thinkful about him and just how long a process it was to get him I give much more thought to the role my parents played in the whole thing. They were behind me wholeheartedly and spent tens of thousands hard-earned dollars. Enablers? Facilitators? Loving parents. Thank you.

I am thankful for my Hardworker and if I took more time to be thinkful about what she has given and continues to give us daily I would probably be even more thankful. I would at least be more expressive in my thanks. I’ll work on that. Thank you.

I am thankful for the fact that we have a bounty of food for our table and a table (or two) of family and friends to share it with. I am thinkful of this quite often … I hit the grocery store at least twice a week and while there is much to choose from I am limited in my purchases to foods that my family will actually eat. I am lucky to have friends who like to eat things that I like to eat but can’t cook at home because I am the only one who will enjoy it. I can make and share with that other household and I also benefit from their own, bolder kitchen choices. For this I am thankful. I know that there are many places on earth where there aren’t even grocery stores let alone 10 varieties of apples or 8 brands of pasta to decide on; this gives me pause and much to be thankful for. I am. Thankful.

I am thankful for online friends who write beautifully and give me much to be thinkful about. They also make me smile and laugh and cry and for all of these things I am thankful. Thank you ladies and gentlemen of my interworldly blogospheric community.

I could write for hours on this topic. How about you? Do you give much thought to being thankful?