Birthday, 2020

For my birthday I got one of the greatest gifts: a lie-in. I eventually got out of bed just before 8 because I wanted to, rather than because I had to, and opened my presents. As usual, a good haul: I got some books to read, some fancy chocolate, a new t-shirt with the logo of the Seattle hockey team, and lots of underwear, fresh from Marks and Spencer, to replace my older stuff. It’s a sign of maturity, or age, or both, that I should be excited to get pants. Maybe it’ll be socks for Christmas.
The girls had school, and I pottered about doing not very much, and then I got to go down to Ballard on my own to buy fresh paint, and have half an hour of uninterrupted solitude in the boardgame shop, looking at different new things and relaxing. I wandered up and bought my wife one of her last presents for Christmas, and then she called me as I drove home, telling me we had to go to the supermarket.

I was having roast beef for dinner, and at the last moment my wife had realised she’d bought the wrong cut. I’m too ignorant to understand the difference, but we rushed out, got more meat, and then I whiled the afternoon away, entertaining the girls for a little while as she started on dinner.

Dinner was sumptuous. We have an enormous rosemary bush in our garden, so part of the repast was home grown, a lovely, rich hunk of beef and then a ginger sponge my wife had baked yesterday, covered in bourbon-laced icing. Our next door neighbours presented us with a brand new hammer (which I’m really rather excited by, as I have been borrowing theirs too much and it’s nice to have hardware independence) and then we passed out on the sofa in a food stupor, watching a surprisingly good horror comedy called Uncle Peckerhead.

Oh, and we decorated the tree. A pretty great start to the month.