I’m not a birthday person. It’s just another day for the most part. Of course, about this time in 2003, I had a guest show up for my birthday: Wegener’s granulomatosis (now called GPA). I thought I had a cold, but by December, the disease was full blown, and I was barely alive, riding to the hospital in an ambulance. After that experience, every day is special: I survived death!
This is what confronts me all day today: Google’s birthday greeting!
It snowed overnight. I think the worst birthday weather was the year my childhood pet, Peanuts the dog, managed to yank out the ground anchor to which his chain was attached. In a blizzard on my birthday, my dog went missing! And he was dragging a 15-20 foot chain behind him!
Happily, he was found by the animal control officer the next day, cold but OK, in the high school practice field only a few blocks from home. He still had his collar and tags on, and he was dragging the chain behind him.
As usual, when the animal control officer opened his truck door, Peanuts hopped right it. Peanuts had a history with the animal control officer. He knew the animal control officer as a buddy who took him for a ride in his truck, then dropped him off at home!
My Dad was Chief of Police then, but I think the rule of thumb was you didn’t have to pay a fine if you called the police to report a missing pet before the missing pet got picked up as a stray. Peanuts was a bit of an embarrassment to my Dad because of this “relationship” between the animal control officer and the Chief’s dog…! 😉
Yeah, snow on the ground. That’s a birthday tradition of mine, too…and a good excuse to stay inside and enjoy doing nothing!
My intention is to have a quiet day at home. Though I managed to get through all the things I needed to complete yesterday, the day ended with a great four-hour telephone call with a favorite cousin! We’d still be talking but my cell phone battery ran out of juice. Best of all, we made plans to get together to go out for supper one of these days when she comes to town!
Andy (above) and Dougy lurked in my bedroom last night, and decided 1:30 AM was a good time to wake me up on my birthday! (Notice Andy’s horn is showing. I guarantee there was another one on the other side, too!)
Now that I’m wide awake, as of 1:30 AM because of the cats, where are the cats and what are they doing? Well, they are both curled up, warm and comfy, asleep! Did you expect anything different? 🙂
I am sorry to be late but I would like to wish you every happiness and all prosperity along Life’s Journey and to say to you belatedly . . . “Happy Birthday.”
Thanks! Likewise for you. I believe I read you have one coming up shortly! I’m enjoying your blog, incidentally, since I live in Nebraska, a very scarlet state where up is down, and left is right. “Progressive” is not a nice word here for the two-thirds who always vote Republican, no matter who or what the candidates are.
Nebraska? I am wondering how the debate is going in Nebraska about the big oil pipeline that Trans Canada wants to build across the Ogallalla Aquifer? Some people see that as a potential disaster for American Agriculture if ever the oil would spill into the aquifer. Do you have an opinon about that pipeline?
I regard it as a disaster that has been over-sold as as a benefit. There is the issue of the use of eminent domain by a private company (usually reserved for governments, but allowed by a recent law in the Nebraska Unicameral, there is the issue of whether this is constitutional that’s yet to be resolved). I wasn’t encouraged when I read recently that the southern part of this folly had nearly half of the welds rated as inadequate, thanks to inadequately trained welders and shoddy workmanship. Great news for people east of the pipeline (the water moves west to east through the ground), eh?! You might find this blog interesting:
http://uvoted4them.com/
Wishing you a belated happy birthday!
Thanks! It was very pleasant, and I even got a nap in. Ha!
Aww look at that eye ball and that sweet little nose.
A very happy and blessed birth day to you and hoping you are blessed through this next year,
That’s Andy giving me “The Eye”! He’s not sure what’s going on, but he knows it’s his business! Anyway, thanks! I had a pleasant, uneventful birthday, just what I planned.
Happy Birthday, hope it was nice!
That it was! I didn’t do anything dramatic, but that was the plan.
Good to hear, all I want for my birthday is a nice dinner (can be at home) and visit the native nursery…
That sounds nice, too! The least fuss is best, in my opinion. Leave the hoopla for children’s birthday parties.
I wish that you enjoyed a happy birthday day, excuse me for the delay to congratulate … has been a busy week (one thing that is scarce in my country).
I was glad to see Andy again cheerful, chasing feathers …
Sorry for the grammar mistakes, my English is not good but not discourage me, I’m trying to improve!
Best wishes Doug.
I guarantee your English is much better than my Spanish! Thank you for the birthday greeting and for following my blog! Yes, it is great to see Andy being frisky again.
Thanks for the encouragement, very friendly!!
It’s my pleasure! It isn’t easy to learn another language well enough to carry on a conversation or to write, which I learned when in Germany when I was in the US Army, but I always appreciated the encouragement Germans gave me when I used their language, as best I could! Your English definitely is better than my German is and was!
Doug, I so hope you enjoy your Birthday! Stay warm! Best wishes!! 🙂
Thanks! I pretty much did nothing all day but eat and sleep. Of the two, the sleep was best because my cats managed to deprive me of sleep several days last week. Their “reward” was I slept like the proverbial log till 3 AM this morning before I got up. That, to them, was like I overslept hours after their perceived breakfast time! Poor babies!
(runs around in circles, jumps up to lick face) Happy Birthday Doug! We are glad you are still with us. Thank you for the story about your dog. It was very cute! I like the big cat eye looking out balefully upon us lowly readers. Woof! Love, Maggie
Thanks, Maggie! If I didn’t live in an apartment, I might have got a dog instead of two cats. It didn’t seem fair to have a dog, though, when walking one would be difficult for me. ANyway, Peanuts was a beautiful mutt, with black hair, a long tail with beautiful “feathers”, and a pure white chest. He was an ameable, humorous dog, a perfect companion for me once my siblings all grew up and left home for the military, marriage, or university. We still tell Peanuts stories from time to time because he left a legacy!
Woof! Looking forward to reading them! (wags tail)
I’ll try to see how I can work a few into my cat stories, Maggie. Also, poor Peanuts died over 40 years ago, so the stories get a bit garbled with time, become mythical!
Happy Birthday, Doug! Enjoy your day!
Thanks! I had a pretty good one this year…ended it by conking out early, then going to bed. The cats did a good job of getting me up early all week, but their reward was having to wait till 3 AM today to get fed. Poor fuzzballs! (Plus, I accidentally closed the door on Dougy before he got out. I didn’t see him hiding on the other side of the bed. Another time, he spent several hours locked in my room before I realized I hadn’t seen him for some time. Regardless, he was by the door, very upset, when I opened it a few minutes after I got up!
Glad you had a good day, Doug. There’s nothing cats hate more than closed doors. There’s usually nothing wrong with the room they are in — It’s the principle of the thing. I spent an entire afternoon putting childproofing devices on my bottom cabinets. Within an hour of letting them out of the basement, they had every one of those “child-proofed” doors open. There’s nothing a determined cat can’t do.
That’s been my experience, too! It is easier to just live with the reality than to try to bend it. LOL!
Wishing you a very happy birthday.
Thanks! It was a pretty good one considering I didn’t do anything special.
Happy Birthday! It’s snowing here as well. 😉
That’s because we were the “luck ones”, eh?! Fortunately, we got just enough to be pretty, but not so much everything stopped till dug out.
LOL, I think we’ve had enough of “pretty”. 🙂
…and how!