Seventy!
My first challenge, an acronym for
Seventy;
S – Skilled
E – Exciting
V – Vibrant
E – Energetic
N – Nurturing
T – Transforming
Y – Young
I
can honestly say that I have not spent much time thinking about what I would
feel like on my seventieth birthday!
This birthday, like all the others just showed up and aren’t I the lucky
one. Lucky, not just because I reached
this milestone. Lucky in so many ways on
my journey to Seventy. Lucky in Health
and blessed with a loving partner for the last 21 years.
Alex
makes each birthday memorable and I ensure that each birthday is remembered by
recording the events of the day. I
actually got a birthday teaser on the 13th, Saturday evening.
Alex
asked me, “how many flower vases do you have?”
My reply, “two large ones, two middle size ones and two tiny ones.” “Well, I have birthday flowers in the car and
it might be better to bring them in now so you can put them in water and save
you doing it tomorrow.”
He
brought in three big bouquets of flowers.
One of them sunflowers, with Gerber daisies and small long stem
chrysanthemums, a second bouquet was 4 purple irises with six various coloured
roses. The third bouquet was purple
chrysanthemums and white with delicate greenery. I enjoyed arranging these beautiful and
fragrant flowers in our vases and placed them in my office room for the night.
This
morning we woke about six. Not ready to
get out of bed yet, I enjoyed my book until about 7 o’clock. When I came down the stairs there was an
envelope in the letter box of the front door and another one in the fridge. Two
lovely cards from Alex.
Birthday
messages from Huey and Angie and sisters and dozens of Face book birthday
wishes from family and friends. Alex
asked what I would like to do. “I
always enjoy going to the seaside, and Great Yarmouth is the closest, just
under an hour drive.” Choice is limited
with lots of places still closed.
I
am sipping peppermint tea and Alex has coffee.
I had a thought, “what is the difference between peppermint and
spearmint?” Alex says, “Ask google.”
Peppermint's flavour is similar
to spearmint, but it contains the ingredient menthol, making its
flavour stronger and more pronounced. Both spearmint and peppermint have
menthol in them but peppermint contains a higher menthol
content (40% versus. 05% in spearmint) So now I know and if you
didn’t, you do to. I have peppermint
growing in the front garden and can have real mint flavoured hot water daily.
Alex had two toasts with butter and I had a
banana, with yoghurt and tbs. of ground chia seed with flax seed and my mint
tea.
I prepared a couple of sandwiches for us two
nectarines, and water, into a bag with two large towels and we had our two-fold
out chairs in the car.
I went into my office to get my phone and there
on my desk were five gifts!
A bottle of Gucci Guilty fragrance, a pkg. of
three large emery boards, Finest quality gardening gloves that are thorn
proof! A magazine and a new blouse, grey with silver leopard
pattern on it, short sleeves. I feel
quite pampered!
We decided to leave about nine o’clock to arrive
early enough to get a free parking space and before the heat of the day, and
the crowds. After Covid-19 U.K is just beginning stage 2 coming out of
lock down. This is the first weekend
the public toilets are open at the seaside as well as a few beach side coffee
and ice cream vendors.
I wore my swim suit under my white sun dress
with a long-sleeved white shirt over top.
Alex wore his green shorts and grey T-shirt.
We managed a parking space on the street right
near the toilets and where there was the one and only boardwalk across the
beach to the shore. We enjoyed two hours
of sitting, talking, people and dog watching and listening to the surf and the
sea gulls. I walked bare foot into the
surf but the water was not warm enough
for me. We did see one-person swimming. There was a man flying kites. One was black and huge shaped like a
bat. The other was yellow and a bit
smaller. Each time he had a kite in the
air, the seagulls would go crazy with their panic bird noise. They would all fly together in a large
circle, and shriek around the kite.
Without looking, we knew when he had his kite in the air.
As we were on our drive home, there were dozens
of cars coming to the Beach. The
sun was now high in the sky. As we walk through
our front door, the house feels cool and fresh and welcoming.
As I sit here now making note of this special
birthday, Alex has had a nap and is out mowing the front lawn. He did the back lawn yesterday. When he finishes that, we will have our
dinner, food prepared yesterday, an easy cold meal of green salad, and potato
salad and boiled egg. Alex has a
store-bought shrimp salad to. We will
finish our evening watching the last episode of ‘When Calls the heart’ and Goggle Box.
Chrissie gave me a cute card and garden
ornaments. Two ceramic mushrooms that
sit on a ceramic stick stuck into the ground.
They are really cute and I placed them on the tiny white stones of the
cats’ grave with my purple flowers. One
of the mushrooms is pink and the other purple.
Alex has shared with me twenty birthdays, each
of them special and each one recorded in a word document on my computer. If I
ever have trouble remembering, I can just open my file and read about it. In fact, I now have a good idea to go through
all my documents and put the birthday memories in one file in chronological
order. Twenty birthday celebrations,
twenty Anniversary celebrations and twenty of Alex’s birthdays! Life is to be celebrated and I am blessed
to have so many occasions to celebrate with the one I Love and feel Loved by.
