Interesting trips around the sun

This past week included my birthday, and was celebrated by phone calls from relatives and children and friends. Ann and I began putting together duplicate coincidences. It is my birthday. It is Easter. It is cold and snowing. A duplicate of the day of my mother's funeral.

Ann and I chuckled and pieced together the events of that day, twenty four years ago. The scramble to find warm clothing and boots for those unprepared, like my cousin in from Texas, and Ann, and my brother and his wife, in from southern Ohio, and the children, and my niece, and on and on and on. We looked like rag-a-muffins, and that surely amused mom, who specifically forbad the notice we put in the paper.

Such a send off. A beautiful eulogy from Mom's beloved pastor, the floating, dancing fingers of the woman who signed for my deaf niece. Mom left a life time of friends. So many came to her interment that two escort cars were required to direct traffic. And we delayed her burial to the day of my birthday to not interfere with Easter weekend.

What goes around comes around, as they say, and my daughter's fiftieth birthday included her Uncle Walt's funeral. Interesting markers. Mom was 79 when she died in 1997. My father was 70, twice my age that year he died. My brother Mel's life was so confused, I pegged his death as the thirty third of August. My sister says the coroner gave him a date.

I hope you're still with me. It really did snow yesterday, a lot more than that. Or the day before. I don't remember which day it was.

I literally have been out of the house once in the last two weeks, and that was to sweep the snow from the deck and put the trash in the cans. I should go stand on the deck and deep breathe a lot some time today. The sun is blinding. Maybe when Cathy comes with the mail this afternoon.

My accomplishments this week include finishing the current length of towels, and knitting the current sock as far as turning the heel.

Kiwi. I love this color. It's in the dryer as I type, and will be towels before the weekend is over.

I love knitting socks. They are simply a set of math rules. For a long time after the head injury I believed I never would reconstruct the meaning of the math. But when I found the half finished second sock in the knitting bag, next to the finished first sock, I found I could do it, and so I did. So, I'm half way to trying the new toe.

There is not one thing new in my little house, except the Gerbera daisy I was gifted for my birthday. It was sampled by Mr. Cat overnight, the night before last. It made him act extremely unwell yesterday morning, which I did not find the cause of until he deposited some green leaves and orange flower petals on the floor. Later he added his entire breakfast! He has lived with a Gerbera in the past, with no incidents.

The amaryllis simply continues to nourish itself via leaves. The leaves are beginning to droop, and I don't want to cut them off yet, until I can make a good, close cut to the bulb. That seems to be the way it was groomed for at least the last ten years, if I'm counting correctly.