Skip to main content

happy birthday

Today I am 29 years old. I don't mind being a 29 year old. It has it's advantages, I'm sure.

It's only 7:33am so I don't really know how my actual birthday is going to be but yesterday was great. After a meeting here at home with the other Seminary English teachers, Phil told me that Terri (coworker) wanted to see me the office. I knew something was up and when I walked into the office everyone was standing there, Terri was holding a cake with candles, and they all started singing "Happy Birthday". I wasn't surprised that they did something but I was surprised to have everyone there at that moment singing to me. I'm enjoying a piece of the spice cake right now with coffee. They also made me a really sweet card that was very encouraging.

Terri and Buddy(dog) came over around 5pm last evening so that Phil and I could go out. I knew we were going to a restaurant and I knew we should dress a little nice. We both looked nice but we couldn't resist wearing our sandals. Sport sandals are nice, right? So we caught a taxi to Hangkou (across the river from us) and I still didn't know where we were going but Phil seemed very confident and we had a great ride over - took us about 30mins. Once downtown, the driver started looking at Phil and Phil told him he could pull over anywhere. We got out and I kept saying, "How do you know where we are?" We had never been to that part of Hangkou. Phil just takes my hand and starts leading me down the street like he'd been there a thousand times before. We crossed the street and ended up at the Ramada. The Ramada is a tall beautiful hotel with doormen, foutains, WONDERFUL bathrooms, and this romantic restaurant called the Rose Restaurant. So that was our destinations. I had one of the best meals of my life and I can't even start to explain the depths of delight that my dessert brought. You'll just have to go to the restuarant yourself and order the chocolate fondant.

After supper we used the bathrooms, again. I'm serious, they were really wonderful. We also went to the top of the hotel to check out their revolving restuarant. It was very cool and would be another fun date. Then we walked around Hangkou checking out shops and just enjoying the hussle and bussle. We came home to find Madeleine sound asleep after a fun night of playing with Terri and Buddy. Terri is wonderful and we really like Buddy, too. So, a good time was had by all.

This morning Phil is feeding Maddie and I was going to go for a jog but Phil talked me out of it because the air quality looks horrible. When your husband talks you out of doing something that will make your body look better, you should listen. So I decided to blog. PengAiYi is coming soon to clean and then later we may go back to HangKou to buy DVDs and eat at Mr. Donut. Rhoda (coworker) will go with us. She's our age, a lot of fun, and knows HongKou so we'll actually be able to find Mr. Donut this time.

Popular posts from this blog

It's simply  the break in the clouds the huff up the mountain the cover of yellow leaves the toast of the sun that brings the swell of the spirit.

Fickle ol' solidarity

At some point in March when this virus deemed that it had spread so far that it could be called a pandemic, I told the girls they should do video journals to remember the days of living in a pandemic. Here now in the middle of April, I realize that I need to write for myself and the girls can just have lots of regret when they're older because they didn't do what I said. When the whole world started moving to stay-at-home orders, I felt such a strong sense of solidarity.  I looked at all of us (literally all of us - okay, most of us) in our different areas of the world facing this beast together.  Jimmy Fallon's wife filmed him hosting from home.  John Krasinski started SGN in his home office.  Everyone was joking about toilet paper, sweatpants, and cutting your own bangs. Italians were singing from their balconies.  Wuhan folk were singing from their high-rises.  Hospitals in NYC were being surrounded by patrol cars each evening with lights flashing and ...

All these posts

Somewhere in space are all these posts that people write.  I've had this blog for years now and I hardly ever use it but it's still always here.  Who is that person that finally says, "Okay, enough is enough. Your blog is gone."? I'm tired.  It's Saturday afternoon at 4pm.  I'd like to nap longer or watch a movie.  I don't want to play chu chu train and I don't want to take a slow toddler paced walk outside.  I don't want to start making pizza but I should, which means I need to go buy tomato paste, make the sauce and make the crust.  I'm feeling lazy and a hard thing with being a parent is that when you're lazy, others in your life have the potential to starve. We're looking at buying a house.  It's not an easy thing to do when the house is on one side of the globe while you're on the other.  When I want to get something done, I want it done now.  So, that's making this process hard.  We're at the mercy of east...