Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Tuesday Coffee Chat: Birthdays

Rory Bore at Ink Interrupted hosts the Tuesday Coffee Chat, and this week she asks the question:  It's my birthday this weekend - I will be camping with Girl Guides.  What is your perfect "this is how I spoil myself" birthday plan?





My birthday is a touchy subject.  The best birthday i ever had was the one on which #1 Son was born.  Yes, he was born on my birthday, which was also Grandma Mary's birthday.  At some point, every year, i whisper to him that he is the best birthday present i ever received!

My worst birthdays were the one when i was taken to the dentist to have several teeth pulled when i was young, and the one three years after #1 Son was born, when we buried our daughter.  (Yes, i know, but the church we attended then had a part time pastor, he only did funerals on Saturdays because he had another job on weekdays, and that Saturday happened to be on our birthday, so we were stuck.)

Thus i do not make much of my birthday.  It's always been about making #1 Son feel like the center of attention, cooking whatever dinner he wants, getting him his favorite cake.  It's easy to satisfy me, just make sure he is happy.

To spoil myself, i go on a trip every fall that i call my yearly sanity retreat.  Several years ago, a person on a chat board whom i'd never met invited any of us who wished to come visit her.  Several of us took her up on the offer, and we get together every year now.  This September, we will be going to San Antonio, and i can hardly wait.  Grace has a new home, and she is packing her husband and son off to stay with her married daughter, so we can all come stay there.  It's going to be amazing.  It always is.

Another bit of spoiling that i do for myself is when we go on the family vacation each year.  That's when i sit under the artificial waterfall at the swimming pool, nice and shady and that lovely white noise to soothe me, and i do crossword puzzles and check the insides of my eyelids for cracks.

My birthday this year will be on a Saturday, so i know i will be working.  That will be a good thing.  My spoiling will come later in the year. when i get away from the daily grind and get to enjoy time with people i don't see often but who mean so much to me.

What do you love to do for your birthday?



Today is

Ancestors' Day -- Russian Christians; Belarus (Radunitsa, a Slavic tradition after Thomas Sunday)

Clean up Your Room Day -- one of those holidays that no one knows how it got started, but it's a good idea, especially if your house is decorated by teens in "Recently Ransacked" style!

Constitution Day -- Federated States of Micronesia

Golden Spike Day -- finishing the first US Trancontinental Railroad in 1869

Mother's Day -- Belize; El Salvador; Guatemala; Mexico 

National Shrimp Day

St. Cathal's Day (Patron of blind people, drought relief, epileptics, paralyzed people; Taranto, Italy; against blindness, drought, epilepsy, hernias, paralysis, plagues, storms)

St. Father Damien of Moloka'i's Day (Patron of lepers, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS; Hawaii)

St. Job the Patriarch's Day (Patron against depression and ulcers)

Trust Your Intuition Day -- practice, and you'll get better at it

World Lupus Day

Yom HaZiKaron -- Israel (Memorial Day; begins at sunset)



Birthdays Today:

Kenan Thompson, 1978
Amanda Borden, 1977
Jason Brooks, 1966
Paul "Bono" Hewson, 1960
Phil and Steve Mahre, 1957
Donovan, 1946
Dave Mason, 1946
Marie-France Pisier, 1944
Judith Jamison, 1943
Gary Owens, 1936
Barbara Taylor Bradford, 1933
Pat Summerall, 1930
Ara Raoul Parseghian, 1923
Nancy Walker, 1922
T. Berry Brazelton, 1918
"Mother" Maybelle Carter, 1909
David O. Selznick, 1902
Fred Astaire, 1899
Max Steiner, 1888
Karl Barth, 1868
George Ross, 1730
Emperor Fushimi of Japan, 1265
Emperor Claudius, 213


Debuting/Premiering Today:

Twister(Film), 1996
"The Rest of the Story"(Radio), 1976
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major(Shostakovich Op. 102), 1957


Today in History:

The Roman armies under Titus open a full scale assault on Jerusalem, 70
Vienna's church orders all Jews to wear a distinctive garb, 1267
Scottish nobles recognize authority of English king Edward I, 1291
Amerigo Vespucci allegedly leaves on a voyage to the New World, 1497
Christopher Columbus "discovers" the Cayman Islands, 1503
Jacques Cartier visits Newfoundland, 1534
Scottish Protestants under John Knox uprise against queen-mother Mary, 1559
England forcefully annexes Jamaice from Spain, 1655
Benjamin Franklin first tests the lightning rod, 1752
Louis XVI becomes King of France, 1774
The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declare war on the United States of America, 1801
New York City banks fail, and unemployment reaches record levels, 1837
In India, the first war of Independence begins, 1857
The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah (not Promontory Point, Utah) with the golden spike, 1869
Romania  declares itself independent from Turkey, 1877
The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit, under the Tariff Act of 1883, 1893
The first Mother's Day is observed, 1908
J. Edgar Hoover is appointed Director of the FBI, 1924
First successful launch of a V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground, 1946
Bill Haley & His Comets release "Rock Around the Clock", the first rock and roll record to reach number one on the Billboard charts, 1954
The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes Operation Sandblast, the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth, 1960
The Federated States of Micronesia  becomes self-governing, 1979
François Mitterrand becomes the first Socialist President of France in the French 5th republic, 1981
Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president, 1994
Deadliest day on the mountain: a rogue storm on Everest claims 8 lives, including experienced climbers, 1996
The Maeslantkering, a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands that is one of the world's largest moving structures, is opened by Queen Beatrix, 1997
Solicitor General Elena Kagan is the youngest Justice and third woman nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States, 2010
Microsoft announces plans to purchase Skype, 2011

6 comments:

  1. I love going on your September trips. I'm going again this year.

    I don't do anything for my birthday. We may go out to dinner, but that's about it.

    Have a fabulous day my friend. ♥♥♥

    ReplyDelete
  2. Have a best that you want on your birthday my friend. It's just another day people tell me but I always make it a special day because it told me that I made it to another year since my stroke which was told later that I should be dead, so birthdays can be as great as you want them to be.
    My wife & I have a regular day but later the grandchildren want to come and give grandpa gifts and help him to blow out his candles and oh course, eat some birthday cake.
    Happy Birthday. See ya.

    Cruisin Paul

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't do anything special on my birthday. My wife treats me like someone special every day.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't usually make a big deal out of birthdays, but this year i turned 70 and bought myself a really nice guitar.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My birthday is on January 3rd and by that time most people are partied-out from Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. I can't blame them, but that's why I've never had a birthday party in my life.

    My sister wanted to throw my first party when I turned 50 and she was very insistent. I turned her down. Why start having birthday parties now?

    ReplyDelete
  6. My birthday is in January and so many people have passed at that time that I now celebrate it later in the year. I'm not sure I think birthdays are that important really, but I guess I prefer other peoples to my own!

    ReplyDelete

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