Seven Eleven Eleven

This morning I went skimming back through blog entries from about a year ago to ascertain how I had commemorated my wife’s birthday in 2010. I belatedly realized that, technically in a day-of fashion, I didn’t, because her birthday fell on a Sunday last year and Sundays are far and away my least-likely-to-post days. But on the day after her birthday I recapped our indulgently decadent double-dinner adventures of the night before, so there’s that.


Of course, a mere matter of days later my wife would be newly pregnant with the little girl, which leads in turn to us having a three-month-old one year later, and means that as we (and, therefore, the world) celebrate the magnificence of another year of my wife’s life today we find ourselves in differently proscribed circumstances. They are happy circumstances, beyond any conceivable argument, but they are almost the opposite of a year ago. One summer ago our little guy was getting big enough to be left overnight with his grandparents while his mother and I enjoyed a mini-getaway; now we’re back to keeping the needs of an infant first and foremost in any social planning (or lack thereof). Also around this time last year we were feeling good about the steady decrease of daycare fees (or “tuition” as the centers call it, which never fails to amuse) from our household outlay as the little guy got older; tomorrow I’ll hand over the second (of what will be many) staggeringly ballooned check for daycare costs now that we have two little ones enrolled at once.

Timing is a funny thing! But my wife is taking it all in stride, good spirits and good humor intact. We may not be logistically able to wander the city streets at our leisure or financially able to satisfy every culinary craving, but we will make do. Yesterday we bought a no-frills DVD player and a three-shelf bookcase; I spent a bit of the afternoon assembling the latter and hooking up the former to our old tv in the basement, so that it will now be possible to watch movies and such while working out. We also managed to get out to Wegman’s* yesterday and pick up a celebratory pie for the birthday girl, which will be the dessert-a-la-mode after her requested, reasonably-priced takeout dinner. (Chipotle. Of course.)

So not exactly the rock-n-roll lifestyle, but we’re happy and life is good and points earned in the previous year will simply roll forward to be applied to a subsequent out-of-control over-the-top birthday celebration at some point in the future. And my wife earns a LOT of points in any given year. I am a lucky, lucky guy.

(* You might think grocery shopping at Wegman’s is not really in keeping with the budget austerity we are currently attempting to enforce, but while the big W has lots of fancy, gourmet prepared foods and whatnot which are in fact luxuries, the only thing we picked up in that category was the pie. Their staple foods are pretty reasonably priced and in fact, as we discovered yesterday with no small amount of pleasant surprise, Lean Pockets are hella-cheaper at Wegman’s. So there you go.)