I can't say I get the sentiment of the whole golden birthday routine. Is there a specific thing you're supposed to do? Am I to be especially grateful to be born? Whatever the case is, I know what I've been doing: whatever the hell I want!
The past week has been crazy-go-nuts. Bridget and I have crammed a relationship's-worth of weirdness, dramaturgy, and difficult-to-handle-itude into the past seven days...and have lived to tell the tale! We'll stick with the less charged and more optimistic stories.
We had our first cook-out! Glen came over, and Kitty, he, and I made up a whole mess of food. And when I mean a whole mess, I mean deviled eggs, corn on the cob, garden salad, baked beans, Bridget-style potatoes, veggie kabobs, brats, turkey burgers, and chicken. With delicious locally-brewed beer and non-local Jim Beam and Mexican Brandy. It was an event, to be sure. We ended up saying up till around midnight, shmoozing and drinking and walking the dog. The next morning was a hung-over one. Wowwy.
And then I thought I had tuburculosis! When I woke with a swollen lymph node after a three day stretch of noticable yet inconsistant symptoms, I remembered Glen's story of how his father developed tuburculosis after being innoculated in some way with a derivitive of a bovine TB virus, one likely used to innoculate children. Then I (thought I'd) put two and two together when he said he'd just come back from Texas--where his parents live--and had swollen lymph nodes. One trip to urgent care--and one unnecessarily lengthy encounter with the rudest medical professional I'd ever met--later, I found out I had an abcess around/under my jaw. I'm still not convinced I don't have some very dramatic disorder...and lord help that bastard doctor-in-training if I end up getting teh TBs and don't die before the lawsuit goes through.
Yesterday was par excellence. I went hiking with M'lady and my parents at Rocky Mountain National Park. We arrived at my parents' house at 7:40 in the god-forsaken morning, filled up water bottles, grabbed some snacks, opened my birthday presents (a Camelback backpack, classy-ass hiking pole, and survival whistle from my parents! Thanks guys!!) and then hightailed it towards Estes Park. An hour later, we were exiting the van and entering the trail. The hike was nice and easy at first, with a gently trickling rivulet preferring our left side. Tree cover was plentiful, which was more noticeable on the return trip. We started at a brisk, yet leisurely pace. After the hike Bridget and I took the other day, I had faith that she would be able to keep up with my dad's speed, and indeed it wasn't once an issue that day.
After maybe a couple miles, the path opened up and got a bit steeper, and that was when the real Colorado hiking presented itself. As we ascended, the views got more and more magnificent. We spotted two rock climbers on the near-sheer rock face across the valley from us. The day was gourgeous, the sun on a sliding dimmer switch as the clouds shot past. There was a healthy breeze that kept any of us from having to take off more than our long-sleeved shirts, and it persisted through the rest of our hike, which again was most appreciated on the trek back, when it was time to rest as the sun beat down much hotter than before.
We made it up to our destination after only one false turn that took us about a mile off our intended course. The falls we stopped at were excellent for pictures, in more than one sense: they were taken at the half-way point of our hike distance-wise, at about the two-thirds mark exertion-wise, and in front of a massive, roaring crash of water. My dad took plenty of stock nature footage...for the time being, I'll just post still images.
Throughout the hike our order changed, with my dad remaining in the front the whole time. We had plenty of excellent discussion, with most of it focusing on marveling at nature's beauty and then trying to explain it through scientific inquiry. (I still contend that the reason butterflies got their name was because they tend to "flutter by", and my dad is inclined to agree!) My parents got to know Bridget quite a bit better. Were one to go just on appearences, it would be difficult to tell just how successful the interaction was, but from knowing that my mom had already had some time to get to know Bridget, as well as my dad being happy whenever I'm happy, the long, silent stretches and verbose, esoteric, at times comically blunt (Mickey Mouse files for divorce. His lawyer asks why he doesn't have a better reason than "she's crazy". Mickey replies, "I didn't say she's crazy! I said she's fucking Goofy!") conversation between the four of us indicated to me that Kitty was already part of the bunch, and nobody had to hold up any particular facade in order to make her feel any more welcome than she already was.
After our hike (and a brief snooze in the car ride home) Bridget and I went home to take a shower and discuss how things had gone. We returned to my parents' house to have dinner: wilted spinich salad, baked sweet potatoes, and steak. Down-home cookin' if I ever seen it! Desser was the classic: angelfood cake with strawberries and whipped cream. We sat around and chatted for a bit before excusing ourselves to go home and sleep.
When we got back here, we were so pleased about having survived the tumult of the past week and that the whole experience with my parents went off glowingly that we got all ramped up and couldn't get the hours and hours of sleep we had planned on. We ended up staying awake until a bit before midnight, playing videogames and reading webcomics and doing other cute and innocent couply activities.
And today, I woke up to my birthday! So far, Bridget and I have done nothing but laze around. I had cinnamon rolls made for my birthday breakfast, and we sat on the sofa and read comics as we ate them. Since then, I've done nothing! Nothing at all! Happy Birthday To ME!
Of course, I had to work on a bit of homework...I forgot that being sick and going through drama and surviving it and then being wildly successful during a relationship milestone and then having a birthday does not actually stop the progression of time. Damn.
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