Today, Gabrielle celebrates her fourteenth 39th birthday! Many happy returns of the day! Those were the words that Pooh used in wishing Eeyore a happy birthday. Never exactly understood what “many happy returns” meant. Does it mean that when you take that ugly fuzzy sweater with sewed on pom poms back to Target because it’s just not your style, the clerk takes it back very cheerily and thanks you for coming in? Or perhaps when your husband gives you an iron for your birthday and you wrap the cord around his neck because it wasn’t something more romantic, will the clerk take it back, even though it has blood on it? Like I said, many happy returns of the day! Here's a picture of the announcement that her very artistic mother put together to signal the big event:
Isn't she a cute little tyke?
But back to Pooh and Eeyore. I just got through reading the story about Eeyore’s
birthday again. As those folks who write
movie and book reviews love to say:
SPOILER ALERT! If you don’t want
to know what Eeyore got for his birthday, stop right here and skip down one
paragraph to see how the birthday gal is doin’…Anyhow, back to Eeyore…He’s
quite sad because nobody remembered his birthday. No candles, no cake, no pink sugar. But Pooh comes to the rescue, even though he
is a bear of very little brain. He grabs
a jar of honey. Also tells Piglet who
comes up with a big red balloon. Sadly,
things don’t work out too well. Pooh
succumbs to temptation and eats all the honey and Piglet’s balloon pops. But they give the gifts to Eeyore
anyhow. Pooh tells Eeyore the empty jar
of honey is now a pot to put things in, but he doesn’t have anything to put
into the pot. Then Piglet gives him the
popped balloon, which serendipitously just happens to be the perfect thing to
put into the pot. The chapter ends with
Eeyore contentedly putting the balloon into the pot and taking it out over and
over again. He’s one very happy
donkey. And I suppose that’s what gifts
and birthdays are all about. You may not
get what you were expecting, but somehow, things just seem to work out,
possibly even for the better. After all,
a full balloon wouldn’t have fit into the pot to put things in. And what possible use could a donkey have
with a jar full of honey? Ever seen a
donkey eating honey? For that matter,
ever seen a donkey putting a balloon into a jar? But that’s beside the point.
So back to Gabrielle, and her amazing birthday. It’s not shaping up to be what we would
really like. She has horrible nausea today
and nothing that I am encouraging her to eat has any appeal to her. She is sitting across from me with a glass of
prune juice and a water chaser, hoping that it will soon work its magic (will
leave it at that). She has pretty bad
abdominal pain which is bearable much of the time till she moves or breathes
deeply, then it gets worse. This has
been going on since before the dual chemo treatment on Friday, but has gotten
more intense and is much more discouraging.
We are hoping for a big improvement today, as it is her birthday and
all.
As for birthday plans, those are up in the air. She and Daniel went to Swanson’s nursery
yesterday where Daniel bought her a yew tree in honor of the Taxol and
all. We are going to plant it
today. And I get to start asking questions
of Daniel and Gabrielle such as “what’s new with yew?” And “how are yew?” “What do yew want for your
birthday?” and wishing her a “Happy Birthday to yew!” I’m going to try to get her to eat one
pancake, but good luck with that. I
suspect the day will involve a couple of walks and lots of TV time. As we aren’t having a huge celebration
(though we will indeed find some ways to dress up that prune juice), we have
decided to postpone the festivities till all this chemo stuff is over and do a “half
birthday” bash six months from now in August.
Won’t that be fun? So today, I’ll
let her pick the card games we play, the TV shows we watch, and she can even
boot me out of my favorite chair. And I
won’t make her do the laundry, mop or scrub the toilets till her birthday is
over. After all, I am a caring and
attentive husband.
So, here’s to you, Gabrielle! You’re strong, you’re beautiful, and you’re
gonna have a great year! You’ve done so
many amazing things since your grand entrance into the world in Yakima way back
when. Now, bottoms up with that second
glass of prune juice!
Does anyone in the house actually read the comments, or should I just type an email directly to the B-day girl?
ReplyDeleteI see that neither of us has upgraded our matching wedding dish sets, and you've had yours longer than we have. Well, I remembered that your b-day was after the weekend, but I forgot that today was after the weekend, since it got tagged on with the holiday and all, so here it is...Happy Birthday - and many, many more! (I'm pretty sure that's what "happy returns of the day" means anyway. Sorry to hear it's not gone so well food-wise, but I'm sure you'll make up for it, like we agreed. I really like the idea of the half birthday in August and since that's the officially set b-day bash, I suggest you hold Steve to his kind offer to not make you do those nasty house chores until August 19th. It's all here in writing, as far as I can tell, so make the most of it!
Congrats on the addition of the yew tree to your yard. Hope i get to visit it sometime, and thanks too, Steve, for the Eeyore reminder. My brain has been all over the map today, and Winnie-the-Pooh was just about the only thing missing.
Love to yew all!
Janet