A low-key birthday

This is me in the infamous DKNY pajamas Jordan and Megan gave me for my birthday, which I am forbidden to wear out of the house. It's okay, Megan, we had dinner at home. I think they're really cute and great lounging pjs for entertaining. I will probably wear them on the porch, but maybe I won't tell Megan. You'll notice I have a glass of wine handy.

I am 71 today--hard to believe. My brother called today and said that made me six years younger than he is, but when he has his birthday in March, I'll only be five years younger. I explained to him that he had it backward. We are six-and-a-half years apart. Today was a low-key birthday. I was at the office by 8:15, after a hurried trip to the grocery and then home to drop off the groceries. Staff meeting and then I worked all morning. It felt different--I have been so relaxed, and I didn't truly feel that way this morning. But Jim, Susan and Melinda took me to Cafe Aspen for lunch, which was delightful. Came home, worked a bit, napped (I swear I'm sleeping off years of work), and Jordan and Christian and Jacob came for supper. We ate leftovers from the weekend, and I sent the rest home with them. I am not making tamale pie again for six years! I had ordered a size 10 pair of pants that came today and they are just an inch from buttoning--I'm not going to return them. My goal is to fit into them. Jacob arrived in the bad mood he often is after day care, but he brightened very soon. It was fun, they went home early, and I am at my desk with a world of work to do, so much so that I don't know where to begin.

In early August I am to briefly review three books for the TCU "What's On YOur Bookshelf" group, so I need to bone up on the three. Those I've chosen are: The School of Essential Ingredients, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society (that book has done so well I can't believe there's anyone who hasn't read it), and Comfort and Mirth, pubished by TCU Press. Lori Swick, the author of the latter, was here this weekend, and we had a brief visit on Friday before all my family arrived. She did some signings, and there was a Bookish Frog potluck supper on Sunday night which everyone apparently enjoyed a great deal. I wasn't there, because I still had kids in town. But I love that book and recommend it--set in Austin, Texas, in the early 20th century, it is a gentle novel, sometims epistolary, that deals with women's rights, racial discrimination, treatment of the mentally ill, and through it runs a thread of herb gardening. I absolutely loved it.. And I found the author to be outgoing, a delight to visit with. Read it, please.