It’s good I had managing expectations down on my list of ways to celebrate my birthday weekend. Rudi was forced to deviate from our plans in order to fly out to Utah on Monday to help his mom move into assisted living today. This will be a good decision for her health and independence, but the accelerated timeline and pandemic protocols made it particularly fraught in the short term. I’m incredibly proud of both him and his mom, because I know this wasn’t an easy step.

I did get to do some celebrating in between that and the ice storm. On Saturday, I attended a virtual author event held by one of my local bookshops with four authors who had romance novels coming out this month, including a mother-daughter duo who wrote their story from the perspective of a couple’s dog. I also gave myself a Galentine’s Day treat and made waffles for supper, knit on my sock, and watched the animated Beauty and the Beast movie.

On my birthday proper, I hit up the farmers market (where my order from the bakery included heart-shaped baguette and cookies, a loaf of cherry chocolate bread, and my favorite of their jams, red berry rose). I did some reading, and when Rudi got home from coaching, he and I went to pick up some free birthday doughnuts and ice cream. I chatted with my parents, we ate pizza from my favorite pizzeria, and we ended the evening with Miss Scarlet and the Duke and All Creatures Great and Small.

Yesterday, we slept in a little and then had some birthday treats my parents had sent before diving into virtual tours of assisted living facilities. I took Rudi to the airport and returned home for a long chat with a friend from college.

Today, I slept in very late to celebrate taking the day off from work. The rain had ended during the morning and while I didn’t want to drive all the way to the ocean on my own, I decided to head to the Chesapeake Bay instead. To be honest, while it looks not dissimilar to the Long Island Sound, which I grew up on, it’s more like a lake and is hugely disappointing as a substitute for the ocean. It doesn’t really get waves and it doesn’t smell remotely salty. But I made an effort, and it was the longest I’ve been outside in ages without a mask, since I only saw a handful of people from a great distance. Plus, the Universe seemed to accept the apology I offered the Bay before leaving for just being itself and not what I wanted it to be, since it allowed the sun to peek through the omnipresent clouds. When I got back to D.C., I spent the evening with a friend, eating pizza and King Cake and petting her cats (and wearing masks when not eating, just so you don’t think us irresponsible).

And, now, forward! On to a new year! (And a new, short workweek!)

Every year Rudi’s and my alma mater sends us a Valentine’s Day postcard to celebrate our being a Camel (our mascot) couple. Every year it’s adorable, but I think they particularly outdid themselves this year:

What’s a girl to do on a four-day prime number birthday weekend? Hopefully some of fun things:

• Spend some time outside. There won’t be sun, but there will be fresh air.
• Take part in a virtual Galentine’s Day romance author event hosted by one of my local bookshops.
• Read! I am enjoying my current book a lot, and I have a bunch more promising titles queued up in the physical TBR pile. We’re expecting an ice storm tomorrow night, which means Rudi might not be able to make it home until Sunday evening.
• Finish a sock.
• Chat with friends and family.
• Watch tv shows and movies I like. If Rudi doesn’t make it home tomorrow night, I’m thinking the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants may be in order. If he does, I’ve put in a request for the final Lara Jean movie on Netflix. And Sunday night has good PBS shows and Queen Latifah (all of which can be watched a later night if I get to spend the night talking to friends instead).
• Eat pizza for my birthday supper!
• Go to the beach. I’d love to make this happen Monday or Tuesday, but it’s not a trivial adventure and so depends on a number of variables. If it can’t happen, I’m voting for a dvd-and-baked goods marathon.
• Paint my nails.
• Sleep in on a weekday!
• Collect birthday freebies. (There are a surprising number of loyalty programs at local restaurants, ice cream shops, and bakeries I enjoy that offer you free goodies on or around your birthday. I’m absolutely cashing in!)
• Manage expectations. I love birthdays, which sometimes means it can be a bit of a letdown when real life interferes. It’s a pandemic year. Life is hard and different, and comparing Sunday to any other year (or my hopes for an ideal one) will only lead to tears. I will assume that none of the above things will happen and will strive to be grateful if some of them do. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

What’s on tap for your weekend?

In a few years (and a week), I hit the half century mark. It’s a time for reflection, for figuring out what I want to do with the second half of my life, with the last couple decades of my career, and generally build upon the foundation I’ve built during my first five decades.

In the six months before I turned 30, I started a list of things I wanted to accomplish before I left my twenties. I have absolutely no idea what was on that list, but I’m confident it exists in a notebook somewhere, either here or in boxes at my parents’. I’m also positive that I didn’t accomplish half of it, in part because I left it too late to do the things that were harder and required either planning or real change.

So, I’m going to make a list for my birthday next week — a list of 50 things I want to do before I turn 50. I’m going to leave some of them blank, so that the list can grow with me, but I feel confident that if I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard I can come up with a list that gives me a path forward. I’m not a huge list follower (my weekend plans lists are more things for me to consider doing, but not expect to complete), but I think writing things down can be a healthy exercise. If nothing else, doing it will allow me to give voice to some of the things that I would like to do with my life, but haven’t given corporeal form to — and the time to actually accomplish them. (For instance, I’m clearly not traveling internationally in the next six months, but I do think my passport might be expiring this year and now would be a smart time to get it renewed.)

Do you have a list of things you’d like to accomplish by your next birthday (or the next decade change)? If so, do you have them written down somewhere, or are they just inscribed in your mind? Or do you tend toward just going with the flow?

. . . But today we shall eat ice cream.

Every few years, I fall down a stupid rabbit hole of googling people I grew up with. I have refused to join Facebook for the very reason of not wanting to be in contact with most of them, so I can’t really give you a good reason for why I do it.

I grew up in a large, mostly white town that skewed conservative at the time. It’s purportedly gotten more liberal since I moved away, but its current Republican mayor was first elected when I was 10.

While Karen and I have stayed friends since our high school days, I mostly let everyone else go pretty early on. We (just) predated the internet and it was easy to drift apart as people left for college. As time has gone on, I’ve kept the distance intentionally, although Karen sometimes shares updates about people we both knew. There was just too much rampant conservatism and casual racism from what I remembered (and what Karen shared about her Facebook interactions) to want to welcome that back into my life.

So, why then do I torture myself by looking up the people I grew up with?

I had a drink with a girl I’d grown up with back before our tenth high school reunion. She had come back to attend; I lived nearby but wasn’t going. I asked her why she wanted to bother and she said that she really hoped that some of the people we’d grown up with had escaped.

I’m a little more forgiving now in middle age than I was in my 20s, but I suppose it comes down to exactly that. I check up on them because in the end I want them to have lived happy lives and to have had horizons that expanded beyond the narrow experience we grew up with.

And just often enough, I discover that one of them has.