Birthday stream of consciousness

It's my birthday. I was driving home from doing some errands this morning and I had the best running dialogue going in my head of blog writing! Man, it was good. I have now forgotten all of it. I don't really think I have early onset, although I worry sometimes about my memory. Although I'm NOT old and I do remember lots of things. I just can't think of any right now. Hahaha. And I'm not going to do some piece on THAT. The whole getting older thing. I'm in a good place, with good people, and good food. I have good employment and good recreation, although I would love to travel more. Good. I'm baking a cake right now. Can someone please tell me the difference between Milk Chocolate, Swiss Chocolate, Devil's Food and Chocolate Fudge? I chose Chocolate Fudge because it sounded, well, chocolater. I'm making it in the two 8" round pans my mom used to use when I was a child, and I'm going to frost my chocolate fudge cake with a brown sugar/caramely frosting that my mom used to always make for me (recipe alert!!!! 1 and a half cups brown sugar, half a cup butter, half a cup milk, put that in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Take off heat and add powdered sugar. Frost cake.). My birthday dinner (which I will not make because I would be the only one eating it since the folks I live with are either vegetarian or tuna abhorers) used to always be tuna and noodles with mashed potatoes.

I have come to a few realizations. Nothing profound. Namely, I write more when I have an assignment. For instance, I started a blog a few days ago (here it is).....

"I have adopted a new cooking method. It's the "throw a bunch of vegetables in a pan with broth and cook em" theory of dinner prep. Then, throw what's in the pan in a blender, and you're done and the soup is on the table. It's rather like making a smoothie, only the smoothie is cold and for breakfast, and the soup is hot and for dinner. The amazing part of this is that Jay likes this dinner. He used to LOVE baby food veggies; squash, carrots, peas, etc...but when I stopped the baby food, he stopped eating vegetables. This is a sly way of bringing back the baby food. And I swear, I am not writing about him for at least a couple weeks.

I HAVE been on a food making kick. I made a berry pie yesterday, and I've been doing other soups (chicken, mushroom and wild rice - yum) and pastas and whatnot. I really am happy to not be at Starbucks anymore. I had no idea how much I would love NOT working there. I feel like I'm having another oneyearofopus even though I have a job. Now if this irritating snow would just go away."

(End of blog) ....and then I just got busy with other things and did not write more, or edit, or THINK, or post it. I've been pretty darn successful with the "30 days of......" so I think I'll go back to that for the next 30. I WAS thinking about this in the car. Thirty days of things I love. Yes, yes, I've done it before. But, I really like being positive. Plus there are so many things I love. And, I feel no pressure when I start up a 30-days-of because if I want to, I can just write one measly sentence. BUT, I have to write every day of that 30. Yay! A purpose! Oh yes, in addition, writing about what I love makes even crappy days better because I am suddenly aware of how stinking lucky I am that I have things to love.

(Three hours later, still my birthday)

We have a phonograph. It works a bit. Sometimes we still play records. It's not a high-tech deal; more of an old console style from the fifties. Mostly we listen to NPR weekend mornings with the radio in it. It's amazing how the radio in a thing like that gets such good reception. So, Jay came up to me a few minutes ago and said what's this? and he was holding one of those yellow plastic 45 record center dohickies that let you play singles on a turntable with just the long thing center piece. (After that description, I'm sure I need a picture here.) I got out my 45's and put on Sister Golden Hair by America. That song was my favorite song once. I still love it. I can still sing all the words. I did, and Jay never once told me to stop. It did skip once, where it plays the same phrase over and over and I was so excited. "That's a skip, that's a skip. Listen. Oh, it just used to gripe the heck out of us. You'll never hear a skip anywhere." and Jay actually seemed interested and listened while the I pushed my finger down on the arm to ride through the scratch. Birthday kindness rocks.

Here is a poem from Poetry Daily that I get on Facebook. It's wonderful. Read it slowly, don't rush, and read it out loud.


Happiness

I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth. Does it offend you
to watch me working in it,
touching my hands to the greening tips or
tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild
the living and the dead both
snap off in my hands?
The neighbor with his stuttering
fingers, the neighbor with his broken
love: each comes up my drive
to receive his pitying,
accustomed consolations, watches me
work in silence a while, rises in anger,
walks back. Does it offend them to watch me
not mourning with them but working
fitfully, fruitlessly, working
the way the bees work, which is to say
by instinct alone, which looks
like pleasure? I can stand for hours among
the sweet narcissus, silent as a point of bone.
I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer
than your grief. It is such a small thing
to be proud of, this garden. Today
there were scrub jays, quail,
a woodpecker knocking at the white
and black shapes of trees, and someone's lost rabbit
scratching under the barberry: Is it
indiscriminate? Should it shrink back, wither,
and expurgate? Should I, too, not be loved?
It is only a little time, a little space.
Why not watch the grasses take up their colors in a rush
like a stream of kerosene being lit?
If I could not have made this garden beautiful
I wouldn't understand your suffering,
nor care for each the same, inflamed way.
I would have to stay only like the bees,
beyond consciousness, beyond self-
reproach, fingers dug down hard
into stone, growing nothing.
There is no end to ego,
with its museum of disappointments.
I want to take my neighbors into the garden
and show them: Here is consolation.
Here is your pity. Look how much seed it drops
around the sparrows as they fight.
It lives despite their misery.
It glows each evening with a violent light.

by Paisley Rekdal

My favorite part of that poem is "working like bees work, which is to say by instinct alone, which looks like pleasure."

I good solid line of poetry makes my day.

So, segueing here into Facebook. I am a convert. I have controlled myself and never spend more than a half hour a day on it, and I mostly make sure it's after 8:00 pm. That way I'm not losing scads of time surfing and looking at other people's vacation pictures. But today, I had a million birthday wishes. It was not fake. It was real birthday love. Thank you, to everyone who sent me a happy birthday wish. I feel blessed and lucky. And for all my former Facebook disdain, all I can say is what I say about EVERYTHING......moderation, baby.

Oh, and the realizations. I said several and I only wrote about one. Another realization is that my life is relatively bile free. For many years I produced a lot of bile. (Sorry) It was mainly because I had dismal relationships (the number one bile-producing problem in the U.S. today) and I was younger and confused. Now, very little bile. Yes, I have a 98% bile free relationship (thank you B), I am older (not OLD), and....wait....okay i'm still confused.

Also, I have come to realize that my office (the 8X8 room in our house that has my desk, B's desk and some bookcases) will never be organized to the point where there are no paper piles on the floor. Now, this is something that has, in the past, produced bile in my guts, but, by changing my perspective, I can accept it and live with it, no bile. No hoarding either, again, moderation.

Okay, have you drifted off yet? One more thing. This is the first day of my what-I-love blog commitment. Here it is....

I love chocolate cake with caramel frosting that was made in those old pans that my mom used to butter and flour for every birthday in our family. I love that those old pans were touched by her fingers as she put the batter in, and when she tapped the cake out onto a plate. I love that the frosting is her recipe and that, because she just knew, she didn't write down the amount of powdered sugar when she sent me the recipe so I'm never really sure how much to put in. I love that she cared enough to make me that cake. I love that she's why I have a birthday today. I love that she had me, even though she was older and she and my dad had to cancel their vacation to Hawaii because SURPRISE I was coming and I love that she taught me how to love so many things so very very much.