A New Year

My birthday was Saturday.

Normally, this is the harbinger for a completely miserable day. I'm never depressed because of my age; the day is just a magnet for calamity. It's like Murphy's Law was invented on my birthday.

This year began typically: I woke up; made my breakfast; did my hour-long aerobic workout; then fed the dog and fish (which are supposed to be my oldest two children's chores). During my workout, as usual, my youngest threw a fit (which we lovingly refer to as "Nutties"). He's developementally challenged, and throws a temper tantrum that shifts a bright day into a postapocalyptic negative in the snap of a finger -- like the beginning of the old T.V. show: Tales from the Darkside. He smashed the dog-gate down and freed the Abominable Doofus from his confines. Now, our dog is a German-Blockhead Rottweiller mixed with a Chow and Black Labrador; he's got the size of a Big Rottweiller, the playfulness of a Labrador, and the recalcitrance of a Chow : he's a giant, slobbering, barking, nipping, jackass of a dog that is sometimes outsmarted by our (black) Goldfish, named Life. Yeah, I know. The kids named him. As it turned out, it was an appropriate name. Of our three original fish, Life is the only survivor -- that's how my wife learned that air filter have screens to prevent the fish from being sucked up. I digress. So the Abominable Doofus is drooling in random cirlces, Eli's throwing a nutty, Cait (my seven-year-old daughter) is thumping downstairs one step at a time, wrapped in a comforter, looking like something that was born of the unholy coupling of a lion and a slug, and my wife is waiting for the sun to set before rousing from her coffin. It's a good thing Logan, our oldest son, was spending the night at a friend's, or he'd have been screaming like a girl in a film-noir horror flick. ( The dog's playfulness scares him; along with insects, cobwebs, the water bubbles that form in the tub drain -- which he thinks look like fish eyes, although, I still don't know why that's scary -- and certain kinds of cooked meat.) No stress or anything...

Then, quite shockingly, things got better. While I was struggling to get the Abominable Doofus back into his gated community, my wife proved Bram Stoker right: Although they are considerably weaker, vampires can walk around in the daylight. The nutty gave way to a litany of "eat-eat" and the North American Giant Wild-Haired Slug gradually shed her thick, segmented coating and proved that she had metamorphosized into a cute, hyperspastic girl. However, the transformation did nothing for the hair that even rats would find to messy to nest in.

We traded the oldest child for the youngest, dropped the oldest two off with "Grampy" -- like they wanted -- and did the cake thing. My wife made a scrumptious cake. Then, we went to Topsham (the most peaceful trip we've had in quite a spell) to shop for clothes. Next we went to Borders (bookstores are high on my list of favorites), where I picked up a couple of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels, a Mario Puzo, a Patrick O'Brian, and found Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind -- a book which I have been wanting to get my hands on a copy of. Rothfuss's debut novel comes very highly recommended by some of my favorite authors, one that I had to finish before delving into The Name of the Wind today...

I took my wife to dinner at a restaurant that she hadn't been to. The meal was splendid and we both had our fill. (It was at dusk, so her powers were full capacity.) By the time we returned home, we had traipsed curcuitously about the state. The kids had been excellent for their grandfather, which is always nice (though rare), and were ready for bed, when I was ready to read to them. They went to sleep relatively easy.

It hadn't been the equivalent of the Windsor Fair for the kids, but it was a milestone in calamity-free birthdays, and one of the most enjoyable days that I've spent with wy wife in a long time.