Today is my father's sixty-fifth birthday. I remember last year wondering if we'd reached his terminal age. Today he tells me his own father died at sixty-six (also cancer) and he thinks it will be a "challenge" to outlast.

Unfortunately I just couldn't bring myself to have dinner with them tonight. Instead I had breakfast with my parents and catered out a lemon meringue pie - a pie I'd attempted to make myself this morning with disastrous results, disastrous as in my entire kitchen covered in various sugar and cornstarch cements. Bleh.

Today had its good points: I'm still alive, I still have my family, and we're all healthy. A friend took Nels to school today, thereby freeing me from an across-town errand. I met with three other individuals committed to this year's Community Garden - what a bright spot in the day! And in boiling tonight's bagels (all of which turned out perfectly) I looked out the window to see my husband and son gleefully having a flower fight, probably the only thing I smiled about today right down to my heart.

Labels: birthday, food, Nels, Ralph, the Ghost of Christmas Bastard