Sanity return

Yesterday was my birthday, I am 61 now.

The flowers are a birthday present from my brother Peter who lives just outside Victoria, B.C. The flowers are growing in Peter and Pat's backyard.


[By comparison, it snowed here yesterday, in our front yard we have a few very brave crocuses in a sea of mud and snow.]



We had a great mushroom and asparagus risotto (Isaac made it), salad (Gretel), and chocolate cupcakes with candles (Tristan and Gretel).

The same famous cupcake recipe from Phelan's panpank party, yum yum!




Tristan presented me with two birthday gifts: two birds-eye maple spoons for coffee and sugar, and a glass ornament that looks like an elongated teardrop. It's bright green and is meant to hang in the window and catch the sunlight.

Click on the photo for a better view, they are really quite gorgeous.

Josh and Sam phoned me, Tim says he intended to phone but never quite made it, finally sent me an email saying call him if I was still up and at 11.50pm I did.

Last year I went regularly to a knitting group at the Parkdale Library, the Fabulous Parkdale Knitters. This group was started by Laurie, a retired nurse living at Westlodge Seniors Residence just down the road from the library.

One evening, she was talking about a friend who is coming up on his 81st birthday. She was knitting socks for his birthday present. What she said was that she was glad he was turning 81 because that meant he was finally coming out of his Year of Madness.

We all looked at her. Wha-at?

Oh you know, Laurie says, You're always crazy for a year when you hit one of those decade anniversaries, 40, 50, 60, ...but when you turn 41/51/61, you're back to normal again!

We all looked at each other. Of course. Those decade anniversaries seem so momentous, such big turning points in our lives, of course we're crazy. Then at umty-one it's just another birthday, just another year, you can be sane again.

So I'm sane again.