Three-Nine

Can you believe it?  Today, I am thirty-nine.  

In other birthday news, Reagan and Nora had half-birthdays yesterday!  Reagan is now officially 18 months, and Nora is 6 months!  Shout out to Nora!

This morning, Ben got up at about 6:00 am, went to the store, came home and did the enormous pile of dishes that I never got to yesterday, despite being home all day.  Something about keeping one eye closed all day makes the other one want to be closed too, LOL.  My eye is improving.  I am taking some homeopathy and drops.  I did not leave the dishes until my birthday so that Ben would feel obligated to do them.  But he did every last one of them AND put them away, and there were a lot.  Then he fixed me breakfast--a yummy egg bagel sandwich (an eggel, as the local bagel shop calls them).  He's a good man.  There were also some doughnuts and candles and a few gifts: A bunch of seed packets I had in an envelope upstairs packed nicely into an old tin lunchbox that I bought at a garage sale from Molly ;), a pair of earphones for my ipod (Ben bought an I-pod for me some time ago, and the earphones that came with it are not at all comfortable), and a $25 Itunes gift card, so I can get some tunes legitimately.  Don't tell Ben I would have been thrilled if all I had was breakfast, let alone all the dishes done too.  Dishes are, like, the bane of my existence.  I think I inherited that.

So, today Ben is going to show me how to work the I-pod, because I'm too lazy to figure it out on my own (not what he said, that's me talking).  And, we're going to hang out.  We haven't done that in awhile with all the goings on the last few weeks, and I have been very much looking forward to it.  

Say, did I mention how great Ben has been the last few weeks?  Despite being burdened constantly with back pain (which he doesn't like me or anyone else to talk about, BTW), he helped enormously with the kids when Julie and her crew were here--coming home from work and then getting us out to the park one evening and wading in the creek catching crawdads and other creatures (he did the wading, not Julie and I), and again, out to another park to do some pier fishing (he took care of the bait and casting and all that jazz), one night after fun in our back yard, washing ALL of the kids' feet in the tub, and taking two fishing trips with the boat by himself with a handful of kids.  Oh, and I shouldn't forget a couple of trips to Costco to stock our kitchen and restock the popcorn chicken that the kids devoured.  Then, he spent a great deal of time (which he was happy to do) preparing for Jeremy and Marlene's wedding ceremony, working every day these last weeks, and having packed evenings and weekends, and doing all the driving to Chicago and Wolcott.  He set up the tent before I even realized he was doing it, helped Dad with the outdoor shower construction, gave Molly a shower and put her into fresh pjs after a day of romping with kittens, and got the boys and Molly settled into the tent while I removed my contacts and got ready for bed.  Then, the next day, he took down the tent, rolled up all the sleeping bags and air mattresses, and packed up the van.  What the heck was I doing?

Anyway, as I said, he's a good man.  I'm lucky to have him.  I don't say it enough.  I love him dearly, and more every year.  Can you believe that this is the twenty-first birthday I have spent with him?!  We have now officially been together on this earth longer than we've been apart.  It's a wonderful life.