Cream

For a day when I couldn't breathe through my nose, my birthday yesterday seemed pretty charmed.

It was a work day for me, but I came home a couple of hours early to take a nap and sit on the couch knitting in complete silence for 45 minutes or so before picking the girls up from day care.

Ingrid came home excited about the promised piece of Mama's birthday cake (A got ahold of a fantastic chocolate cake with some sort of amazing chocolate cream inside).

Before dinner, Ingrid and A mysteriously disappeared into the basement. It turned out A had a little surprise (earrings! and flowers!) that he got Ingrid to help him prepare. (She signed the card, put the flowers in a vase, and, it seems, helped tape up the wrapping on the earring box).

A friend joined us for dinner: takeout Thai food, a huge treat since our extra-lean budget went into place last summer. Iris fell asleep at seven, and I drank a whole beer. We stretched Ingrid's bedtime a bit so she could have a sliver of cake, which she dug into with relish.

I kept thinking about my past several "birthday wishes"...from when I blew the nuts off the cake five years ago (a baby, please) to the following year (please, a baby?) and the next (a healthy baby?) to last year (another healthy one?)...and feeling so sleepily, stuffily grateful that no giant want looms so large anymore. Huzzah! I can now use my birthday wishes for, I don't know, better hair. Or a winning Obama/Clinton ticket this fall.

I read to Ingrid before bed, and before I left the room I said to her, Thank you for making my birthday so special. With her eyes almost closed, she gave me a drowsy smile and said, I loved it. I wasn't sure what she meant until she finished: It had cream in it.