Thursday, June 27, 2013

Birthday Doings

What a memorable birthday! I had in mind to look for a garden flag for my birthday, so I looked in Tuesday Morning in Stillwater. They only had a couple, but I finally decided on one, although I was afraid it was a little big. But when I got home, it was perfect, and so pretty, in a homespun sort of way!

While we were in Stillwater, a bustling little college town, we had lunch at Olive Garden with our favorite soup, their wonderful salad and garlicky breadsticks. Although I knew I would have birthday cake that night at our son's house, I noticed a delicious-looking dessert being served at another table and thought how good it looked!

"What is that cake?" I asked the server when she came to our table. It wasn't on the dessert menu we had. She told me it had a chocolate cookie crust, a layer of chocolate cheesecake with a white layer of vanilla topped with another chocolate layer with chocolate icing! Yum!

"It's my birthday," I told her. Do you do a complimentary dessert?" The young lady said she would check, and said it was usually one of the little ramekins of pudding. Pretty soon she came back with a big slab of the chocolate cheesecake. "I just went ahead and brought you this!" she said. Wow! That was a $6.00 dessert! That was a blessing! (which I shared with my husband.)

I had been wanting to see the new Superman movie, having been a Superman fan since childhood comic book days. We made it just in time for the 2:00 o'clock showing. "It's so dark I can't see," I said to Howard as we made our way into the screening room. Then I heard voices and could see the picture in progress. Good, I thought, no coming attractions to watch. But it seemed to be the end of the movie! Superman was all grown up! Thinking it would soon be over, we sat down.

After half an hour of dramatic scenes that I was pretty clueless about, I checked with a hostess, and she said, "That is the 12:30 movie. You should go to the end of the corridor to the 2:00 o'clock showing. Don't worry, it's just beginning, since we have 20 minutes of coming attractions."

We watched for about 45 minutes of mostly violent action and disjointed flashback scenes, until things started to look familiar. "This is where we came in," I said to Howard. "Let's just go, since we have seen most of the rest of it." This was a little too edgy for me, without enough of the nostalgic portrayals of the hero's childhood.

We hurried home to rest up before we would go to a birthday supper our daughter-in-law was having for me. Just as we got home, our son Jamie skyped with us for a half hour with our beautiful little granddaughters. "Happy Birthday!" the girls chorused, then chatted with us, Anne-Marie showing her gap-tooth smile where she had lost a tooth, and Maddie asking me how many old I was. This was a birthday present dear to a Mimi's heart!

"Mom, bring your Scrabble game when you come over," Greg said when I answered the ringing phone. After a wonderful dinner and a luscious chocolate/strawberry/whipped cream cake, four of us enjoyed a gripping game where I was ahead. "Come look at this weather!" Greg called from the front door. Unreal! Trees were bending, dark clouds were lowering and thunder was rolling from a storm that had come up so quickly we were unaware.

We dashed home to find we had no power, and neither did our neighbors! The house was hot and dark. We sat on the porch and watched flickering flames and smoke billowing from what seemed to be a house fire on the next street! What else could happen? Turns out it was only the flames from a refinery which were flaring because of the loss of power. "Lord, please let the power come on," I prayed after an hour of darkness.

I suddenly realized how tired I was and went to lie down on the sofa in the dark house. A few minutes later, blessed light filled the room! Thank you, Lord! This was enough excitement for one day!

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