Reading: What's that?

Moving: Hauling

House: Hauling

25 May 2000: Birthday

Around ten o'clock the receptionist called asking me to come to the front desk. I'm wise to this now and trotted happily thither. The first year my father sent me flowers, I had no idea. When I came in before 8:00, the receptionist wasn't in yet, and I popped into the office manager's room to tell her. So when the OM called me a few minutes later, I figured she wanted me to run her an errand or something from the front desk. But no, I had flowers from my father.

I was much pleased, and since flowers are much easier to pick out than a dress and more personal than a check, that's what he's given me for the past three birthdays.

Another Dotorgerista treated me to an orange mocha chip frappuccino, which I hadn't had before but liked a surprising lot. Orange and coffee: who'd've thought? Then Coolboss went out for coffee, which she never does, but all was explained when my department clustered around my cube giving me two presents: stuff from Starbucks and not singing the birthday song. So that was all charming: truffles (which they insisted I eat all by myself) and chocolate mints, which I was allowed to share. I am ruined for Peppermint Patties; now I want Starbucks Holland Mints.

At home I found a card from my grandmother in the mail. It was a present in two ways: she's forgotten for the past two years, which distresses me because she always remembered before, and better yet, her handwriting was legible again. She apologizes for her handwriting in every note, and for the past three months it has been nigh illegible. She got her first job because they liked her penmanship, so this mortifies her.

I brought two loads of stuff to the house and settled in to watch ER, rerun or not. It was the Thanksgiving episode where Carol has the twins, totally out of order but guaranteed to suck viewers in. Again, I cried when she delivered the first twin vaginally and was off packing when the second arrived caesarian. A good friend of mine had an emergency caesarian after 22 hours of unmedicated labor, and I don't mean to diminish caesarian as a valid way of hatching. Still, watching such deliveries (so far all on television, acted or actual) doesn't affect me the way vaginal births do.

Then RDC came home from Portland. He said he hadn't had time to get me anything from my wishlist but would look in Portland where, I said, there are no good stores. I might have been being sarcastic.

Warning me not to peek, he went off for a shower. I wouldn't peek. Not, at least, while ER was on.

After I read his card, which I'm not telling about, he withdrew two packages from his suitcase, wrapped in lavender with silver rings printed on it. He might not have ordered from Amazon, but he had consulted it. Which reminds me, I have to update my wishlist and remove these things. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Book Shop. She's my new find: I read The Blue Flower because of an article in The New York Review of Books two years ago and last summer read Gate of Angels. So that was a good choice. Then I opened the second.

"Oh, King of Shadows! Thank you! How did you know about Susan Cooper?" I kissed him and put it down.

His face fell. "You know about it? It's brand new."

"I read it from the library a couple of months ago. But how did you know about Susan Cooper?" He's probably never noticed the Dark is Rising sequence boxed on my shelf. The children's room clerk in Powells asked him what I like, and he said Jane Austen and children's books. Her favorite author was Jane Austen too, and she said I'd love King of Shadows.

But that was not the end of the gift giving. He plunged into his suitcase again and handed me another: Seamus Heaney's new translation of Beowulf. I read a review of this at CNN or the New York Times and I like Heaney and I'll always have a soft spot for Beowulf because of RJH, so I wanted to read this. It had been on my wishlist.

Nor was that the end of the gift-giving. The last book was Robin McKinley's Spindle's End. I was flabbergasted. "How did you know about Robin McKinley?!" entirely forgetting that I'd just added The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown to my list. He was pleased, because here was a new book he picked all by himself that I hadn't read yet.

Then he pulled another package out. This was a little one, earring-sized. A pair of amethysts in platinum, wee in diameter but chunky, so they sparkle a lot more than chips. These I now wear in my second holes all the time.

After that, he told me that was the end and asked if that was okay. I thought the first two books had been all, and that had been okay; the card had been enough. He did good.