a bittersweet birthday month

It’s my birthday month (all hail fellow Capricorns!) and already I’ve enjoyed some great food, laughs with friends and one impromptu serenade of Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday.” To honor the wonderful city of New Orleans I’m asking you to hold your loved ones close, and go hear some live music and celebrate safely. This is a city that knows hospitality and entertainment and the New Year’s attack on Bourbon St. is still weighing heavily on hearts and minds. 

If you’re of a mind to help the families of the 14 departed or the scores of victims, NOLA.com has a list of verified ways to give: https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/here-are-ways-to-help-new-orleans-bourbon-street-terror-attack-victims-and-families/article_d615d2e0-c923-11ef-a9c4-6bd6a4a8ab49.html

Peace and love.

birthday week reflections

I celebrated another year on the planet this week. Capricorns, rejoice!

I gifted myself a day off to spend as I pleased, which included:

Saturn 2024 it's chaos be kind

--A jazz performance featuring the charismatic Merv Campbell (briefly and oddly interrupted with a guest appearance by Mr. Peanut)

--Spending the morning with the wonderful women of Dress for Success

--Coffee and an egg-and-pimiento-cheese biscuit from French Truck Coffee

--Kingcake! from Adrian’s, courtesy of the The Shop at the Collection on Royal

--A stop at the museum to see Naydja CoJoe and her amazing band TheLagniappes

--Dinner and tequila with my partner

--A family Zoom complete with weird cat video and birthday quiz, and the gift of bubbly from beautiful friends

--A king cake cookie from NOLA Cookie

--AND then joyful, mind-bending jazz at Saturn from the ZSC Collective

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I went to bed tired and happy, grateful for family and friends and music and cake.

plan to change to plan

I may have mentioned that planning is a laughable activity these days. Surprising no one, 2020-too is proving the rule, not the exception. This week was to be the start of a two-week holiday jaunt down the coast and east to New Orleans, but omicron and the lack of testing made me think it's best to delay a few weeks.

My s.o. is celebrating a birthday so we relocated to an Airbnb in a nearby neighborhood for a few nights. Or so we thought, until the drunk bro's arrived to party in the unit upstairs. A few hours of yelling, thumping and door slamming later, I complained, which enraged them into further stomping and hollering. At 1 am they pounded on my front door screaming Come outside, so we packed up and left, gunning the rental car onto a foggy dark street, my legs shaking so hard that I had to pull over and take deep breaths. I got my money back and we reconfigured the rest of the weekend but I'm tired and wrung out. My body feels like a couple of wrestlers pummeled me.

On the bright side, there were delicious pastries from a Salvadoran bakery, homemade enchiladas and breakfast tostadas, some long walks with coffee and a joint, and lots of Australian Open tennis. 

My only plan now is to enjoy the bright moments in each day, however brief.

cautiously cautious

It's been a week of birthday and vacation prep. I have a lot of cappies in my life and trying to be festive and also safe-ish is a challenge during year 3 of this sheeit.

****I'm sick of discussing the pandemmy and yet it's ALL we talk about. ALL of us. ALL of the time. Even when we don't want to. It's the text, the sub-text, the meta, everything. Always.

Anyway. 

Last weekend I ordered cupcakes and cookies and spent half a day traversing the city in a Zipcar (sitting at 1/2 a tank and missing its gas card, naturally), delivering treats and saying masked, sidewalk hellos to friends. After last year's lonely trauma I couldn't risk another spiral. And it turned out mostly great! Lots of smiles and air hugs and catch-up chats and one inadvertent merge onto eastbound 520.

Then an hour at a lakefront park with 3 friends, some Prosecco and chocolate popcorn and the remaining cookies. And finally home for Indian food and some family and friend Zooms.

Another day my niece brought me homemade chocolate tarts, piped with white flowers and dusted with edible gold dust. 

There was a moment on my friend's front steps, when we realized we haven't laid eyes on each other in two years. If I think about it I'll cry, I said. 

We just keep soldiering along, vaxxing and masking and waiting for better times, still thinking that they're just around the corner. I want to believe this is true, but it's getting harder to be optimistic. We're radicalized now. The government ain't going to do much, and a third of our fellow humans don't give a rat's ass about anyone else. 

We're all we got.

There's no going back. Only forward. Into what's next.

a very merry

Thanks Moore Coffee for the sweetest mochas I've seen in awhile. A delightful note to a weekend full of happy moments.

phraseology

Scenes from a weekend: I rented a car after work Thursday and caught a ferry to the coast. Friday morning picked up an electric lawnmower at Sears and drove through a sudden downpour out to Ram Hill. I had big plans to work outside all day but using an electric mower in the rain didn't seem like a great idea. The sun returned and by then I had assembled the mower--a super easy snap-n-tighten task thanks to Remington--plugged it in and I was mowing.
Call me melodramatic but it hurts me to cut grass, especially this grass, knee-high and lush and billowy and deeply green, dotted with daisies and some dandelions and wildflowers. But, in the interest of crowd control I flipped the lever to the highest setting and mowed away. I pulled weeds, swept the patio, used the push mower on the driveway, cleared branches, and when I was done, the air smelled rich and sweet, and didn't have that heavy petroleum tinge a gas mower leaves behind, fart-like.
I built a fire Friday evening, sat on the patio with beer and snacks and read and looked up at the sky, listened to the wind in the trees and birds chattering and wet wood crackling.
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Yesterday was a friend's birthday and a bunch of us gathered at her place to celebrate with tacos and a pinata stuffed with candy and lil nippers. Later I had long island iced teas at sunset on the deck at Pony with a charming friend. When I mentioned how sexy his confidence was, he lowered his sunglasses and said, well thank you but is anyone confident? we're all faking it, right? I had to agree. The night ended with whiskey at another friend's, and a belligerent guy ranting at a Ballard bus stop at 1 a.m., screaming about Africa and injustice until a vet, just back from Afghanistan, regulated.

bye now

Killing a few hours at the Dulles airport before my flight to Addis Ababa.
An absent gate agent's phone keeps ringing, Beyonce's tinny voice trilling "All the Single Ladies."
There's wifi, which is nice.
Beyonce again.
I slept fitfully on the red-eye from Seattle. Somebody kept passing ferocious gas.
But, I'm pretty wide awake. I'm thinking the Capitol Grounds decaf probably wasn't.
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Today is the birthday of my oldest niece. Boy, is she old!
This is a mysterious kid, tres fashionable, thrifty, a little hard to read.
All qualities that should come in handy.
Happy birthday Bkres.

If frogs had Justin Bieber bangs

A super c00l kid I know turned 17 today.
I'm probably biased but she's going to do amazing things.
Heck, she already aces school, makes money off an internet upcycle business and manages to find time for powder blue hoodies, video games and Johnny Depp movies.
Happy Birthday J!

Prost!

Another weekend of birthdays is coming up--my sis over at bylynnkrestel, a passel of cousins, a good friend. Prost, all you Cappies!
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I hear a lot about astrology from various quarters, and still have no idea what my birth chart is, nor my moon sign. I have learned when crazy shit starts going down to say wisely, "Is mercury in retrograde?" and solemn heads will nod all around.
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My nieces and I like to page through French fashion magazines and we always read our horoscopes aloud, in our best accents a la Francaise, and then translate them as literally as possible. It makes us laugh, and I'm guessing we're getting close enough.