An Ordinary Day

I believe that birthdays are a good excuse to go out to dinner or to go away overnight.  This year for my birthday, Jon and I are going to see Ladysmith Black Mambazo and have dinner before the concert.

It’s on Thursday night so I’ll miss Bellydancing class (and I will miss it) but it was the only night they were playing.  When I let everyone know that I wouldn’t be in class, they all agreed that seeing Ladysmith Black Mambazo was a good reason for missing class.

My teacher Kathleen reminded me to zagareet (a sound you make by moving your tongue quickly at them the same time as making a high pitched sound in your throat) during the concert, as we do for each other in Bellydancing when someone does something special or to encourage each other when dancing.

And I will.  I find it much more expressive than clapping and since I can’t whistle, I zagareet and yip, no matter what kind of music I’m listening to.

But that’s Thursday and when I thought of what I’d like to do on the day of my birthday, the first thing that came to mind was to take a long walk in the woods.  Then Jon had to cancel his reading at The Mansion, so I went instead, thinking it would be a lovely thing to do since I love being read to and would be doing it for others.

I took Jon’s short story book Dancing Dogs with me to the Mansion and read Luther and Minnie In Heaven. It’s a funny and thought-provoking story about a woman who wants to meet her dog in heaven and finds out that Dog Heaven is a lot different than People Heaven.

Jon warned me that there are always some people who fall asleep when he reads to them, (which I get, I love falling asleep being read to) and some did, but there were also a lot of people listening, laughing and thinking about the story.

Afterward, Georgiana started talking about Grandma Moses, who lived a just south of Cambridge.  Georgiana grew up next to her and told us some stories about when she met her.

Everyone was interested in Grandma Moses, so that gave me the idea to find a book about her for the next time I read at The Mansion.

On the way home, I bought some ice cream for dessert then went for that long walk in the woods with Fate and Zinnia.

Jon’s cooking tonight’s dinner as I write this.

Lately we’ve been eating at the dining room table.  With the woodstove warming the room, we light candles and sit across from each other.  This is new for us.   In all the years we’ve been together, we’ve always eaten our meals in the living room, lately with the fish tank between us, which is relaxing and fun to watch.

But now, eating at the dining room table makes dinner seem special.  And tonight we have a good bottle of wine, instead of an average one, to go along with it.

I was thinking this year how I feel about my birthday.  Mostly, as I wrote, it seems a good excuse to go out to dinner or away for the night.  But I do get the idea of celebrating the day that someone I love was born.

And even though we’re celebrating my birthday on Thursday, I did think about how I wanted to mark the day and not just use it as an excuse to do something fun.

And I feel like I did that, not by doing anything really unusual, but by appreciating those ordinary things that I love in my everyday life.

(This is what a zagareet sounds like…. )