59. Ouch.

Today is my birthday....... I think instead of celebrating this 59th year, I will re-celebrate the 38th year. That seems to be a much better number. So Happy 38th (again) to me. On my 50th birthday, I remember telling my husband's mother that the Big 5-0 wasn't so great. Her answer to me was Honey, I'll change numbers with you any time!

We went out to lunch today with neighbors J & J, to a little Italian restaurant right in town. As far as local restaurants go, this place is the best-- more of a restaurant than a cafe (this town is big on cafe-type places). Homemade bread, homemade everything by an Italian chef who was born in Naples. (Same place that my dad's family was from.)

My husband stopped at one of the downtown Houston markets on his way home last night and brought home two shopping bags filled with birthday goodies..... cooked foods from the organic market, a carrot cake (our favorite), and little birthday surprises. I didn't know he was going to do that, so we had Part I of the birthday celebration last night, followed by Part II at lunch today. (Part III is that I don't have to cook for a couple of days because of all the cooked gourmet foods from the Houston market.)

Pretty day today... not as sunny as yesterday, but just as warm, and we didn't get any of the rain that the local weather-wizards were talking about. I know we need the rain, but I just didn't want to see it today.

The chickens.... PittyPat is sleeping on the very top of the old wooden ladder that I put into the coop for her, so she's quite happy not to be getting pecked by Prissy on the roosting bar. PittyPat is one of the chickens that we got from S across the road, so I'm guessing that PittyPat used to sleep way up high in her old coop. After dragging that old ladder into the coop, I'm glad that it's working out for PittyPat. That little hen used to be very skittish with us... not walking near us if we were out in the yard, staying clear of me when I was near the coop or inside it. For the past few weeks, though, she has warmed up to me, and will come running across the yard right behind Scarlett when she hears me. Guess it takes some of the hens more time than the others to build up a little bit of trust.


I just looked down at the keyboard here. I've typed on this lap-top so much that I'm wearing out the paint on the letter-keys. There is no sign of the E on that key, the R key has just a teeny bit of the top of the letter R left on it, the S and the C are half gone, as well as the D and the T. Hardly anything left at all on the F and B key, and about one-third of the V is gone. I'm guessing my fingernails have been scraping away at the painted letters for all these years and I just never noticed. I can touch-type as fast as the best of them, and never have to look at the letter-keys or number-keys. If someone else needed to use this lap-top and didn't know how to touch-type, they'd have a problem for sure. I'm wondering if they teach kids how to touch-type when they're teaching them to use computers.


That's been about the day... the first day of my 59th (ouch) year. I know about the riots in Egypt. I know about the state of the economy. I know about all the bad things that are happening all over the world-- the storms, the floods, the shootings. I don't write about them here. If you want that sort of stuff, then go read The New York Times or The Houston Chronicle. This is a happy place. This is the inside of my bubble (as my cousin L calls our property and everything on it) and that's just the way I'd like to leave it. A happy place. As in happy birthday.