Milestone birthdays

A warning to parents of young children: those darling tykes who sit on your lap and cuddle grow up to be adults, and they have birthdays—even decade birthdays. It will come as a shock to you.

My Austin daughter, Megan, turned fifty today. What, fifty? Subie and Phil Green came for happy hour, and when I announced Megan’s birthday, Phil said, “You have to be kidding.” Nope, it’s the sad truth. Subie and I toasted to the birthday. Subie thinks I should point out that this picture was taken by Phil, who has almost no eyesight. I think he did a great job.

Megan is handling this better than I am. She is not the first of my children to reach this milestone birthday. Colin turned fifty In April 2019, and we had a huge, three- or four-day blowout in Tomball, complete with barbecue and most of the New York relatives. My large, noisy, and very close family has created a tradition of making huge celebrations out of decade-changing birthdays, and we were distressed that this time Covid-19 kept us all from rushing to Austin to celebrate.

Megan and Brandon celebrated her birthday at dinner last night with four people they are close to and had celebratory dinner plans tonight and tomorrow. Colin called and worried about what we should do and finally sent Tiff’s Treats. Jordan and I spent too long checking out florists in Austin, finding nothing that we thought original enough. Jordan’s inspiration was to call Austin’s Central Market on North Lamar—she got a wonderful salesperson who talked to her on Facetime, walking through the store showing various choices. We settled on a tall and splendid orchid, in a nice chic container that would fit into Megan’s brand new and quite modern house. And then we sent grandson Sawyer, a newly licensed driver, to pick it up. Win, win!

The ringer was Jamie. Last night Jordan got it into her head to track him and find out where he was. On the way to Austin! She immediately thought he had gone to wish his sister happy birthday without telling any of us, and she was indignant that he didn’t take her with him. I felt a bit of that, but I also sort of liked his spontaneity. Well, we were all wrong. He went to pick up a new car (a long story we’ll have to hear another time) and didn’t even see Megan. Now I’m worrying that maybe he forgot her birthday. As you may note, mothers never stop worrying, even when their kids hit fifty.

We hope to have a huge celebration on Thanksgiving, when we are all supposed to be in Austin. But that’s two months away—we’ll see what the virus and quarantine make possible by then.

Meantime, a cooking fail. Anyone ever make that chocolate pudding cake where  you put a batter on the bottom and pour boiling water over it? Somehow in the oven, it magically reverses, and the cake rises to the top and sits on a rich chocolate sauce. I made it this afternoon, in a rush, which is always bad. I don’t think I had the right pan, but worse than that, I think even with Jordan’s help (wearing my readers) we got the proportions wrong. The recipe, torn from some food magazine, was in white ink on a dark background, very small type. It’s been in the oven twice as long as it should be and still is not near done. Maybe I should let it bake overnight? Lesson learned: there are some things  you can cook in a toaster oven. Plus don’t trust recipes with small type. What was I thinking?

Supper tonight is spatchcocked chicken slathered in herbal butter. That too was a problem, but I knew enough to turn it over to Christian who has a big pan and a big oven. He sent a picture of the chicken ready to go in the oven, and we just took an “after” picture. So good. The herbal butter made it wonderful Sorry I can't align the pictures.

Before

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After

Learning to adjust

It’s hard for me to believe, but I have now lived in the cottage for three and a half years. I still love it, am so glad my family made this move possible. But I’ve had to learn to make some adjustments. One of them is that I am now pretty much dependent on other people’s schedules, mostly Jordan.

Jordan doesn’t like me to go to public places—i.e., the grocery store—alone, because she’s afraid I’ll fall getting in and out of the car or that my attention will be so much on getting the walker out and set up that I won’t be aware of my surroundings—and I’ll be mugged. Add to that, the fact that I am not much liking to drive these days. It’s an old fear that I thought I had conquered but has now come back to haunt me, and it’s complicated by the fact that I know my reactions at my age are not what they were twenty years ago. That pretty much means that Jordan takes me to the grocery, although I do curbside pickup at Central Market alone.

We try to make Friday morning our grocery shopping morning, but her business as a luxury travel assistant has gotten busier, and she often has appointments that we work around. One problem, for me, with such indefinite timing is that if I know I’m going to be interrupted sometime but don’t know when, it’s hard for me to settle down to work. Before I can get serious about research or writing I need to know I have a block of time. So on “waiting” mornings, I spend way too much time on Facebook.

Today though it was a momentous occasion—she had to register Jacob for his first year of high school. High school? That kid who used to crawl into my bed to keep me safe from storms? He’s now almost as tall as I am and has this deep voice that I’m still learning to recognize. Yep, he’s going to high school.

As I expected, the process took longer than anticipated. So I waited patiently, knowing she’d come get me when she was through. Oops—she went out to eat, where I thought we’d go  to Local Foods and get tuna for our lunch. (If my kids are smart, they will disable “Find your friends” on my phone—for me, it’s “Find your kids.”) I ate cottage cheese.

We went to Local Foods about 12:30, height of  the lunch rush. Got something for dinner tonight and headed to Central Market, where she realized she had forgotten to get chicken for Jacob’s supper. Got my groceries from curbside pickup and came home.

I have a bit of an ordering problem with Central Market. The website says, for instance, lemons are two for $1, so I thought hitting “Add to cart” put two in my basket. Not so—more than once I’ve gotten one lemon. So today, ordering four chicken thighs for a family dinner, I hit it four times. And ended up with four four-packs of chicken thighs—sixteen thighs is a bit much for an elderly woman who lives alone! Guess what Jacob is getting for dinner tonight while we have turkey burgers with pesto. Central Market was gracious when I called, handled it to my complete satisfaction, and gave me a hint about using the notes section to specify quantity.

Tonight we had a festive Valentine’s supper in the house with a proper table setting, as opposed to eating off the coffee table in the cottage. Jordan used red chargers and water goblets and added a bouquet of red, white, and pink daisies that Christian had brought her. Lots of chocolate for each of us, and Christian and Jacob had a great time guessing what was in various pieces. We found out Jordan does not like coconut!

I’m learning to adjust, and in the long run it was a good Valentines day. And, hey, the sun was shining today. Pretty cold, but it’s sunny.