Wednesday, December 7th was Elegante Mother’s 89th birthday. We didn’t plan a special activity this year, but did a number of low-key things, instead.
In our household, the birthday person gets to choose where we will go out to dinner to celebrate their birthday. We went to dinner on Tuesday night, thinking that the storm might make travel difficult on Wednesday evening. EM chose a small chain called “Redstone.” They serve American cuisine and feature a lot of wood smoked or roasted items. She chose to take home a huge chunk of bleu cheese encrusted fillet, so that she could have the flour-less chocolate cake with raspberry coulis.
Wednesday morning, my siblings and some of their children called to wish Elegante Mother a happy birthday. One of her granddaughters (the one from the car crash) picked her up to do some Christmas shopping, and then I met them for lunch at the mall.
My niece went on from there, and I was in charge of getting EM home again. I wanted to make a stop before we left the mall. Unfortunately, it was the full length of the mall away from where we had eaten lunch. Elegante Mother was up for the trek, because it ended at Christopher and Banks, one of her favorite stores.
My errand was to buy her a sweater. Since there was no way I could do it without her knowledge, I put her to work, and we shopped together. Mother has always said that she was easy to buy for. Just be sure that it’s red. We ambled through the sweaters, and I picked up one for her approval. When I realized it was on sale for half price, I held up a second. She liked them both, and we were out of the store in ten minutes. She’s my kind of shopper! I left her seated near the entrance and hiked back for the car. By then, it was time for both of us to head home.
She told me the cutest story on the way home. It seems that my youngest sis called to wish her happy birthday after I’d left the house. The cute part was that she had her entire classroom shout “Happy Birthday, Mrs. ———‘s Mother!!” so that Elegante Mother could hear it over the phone. And then she did it again when the bell rang and her second class was ready to go. Cute, huh?? I hope the kids had as much fun with it as we did.

I’ve been a long time recovering from the cold that took me down after Thanksgiving. I’ve been short of energy, and interest in anything that required concentration or commitment. So, I was relieved to have a sense of second wind last night.
We were watching “National Treasure” on cable. I realized about half-way through the movie that I could iron and watch at the same time. The ironing basket has been overflowing since Thanksgiving, and one of the things I wanted to do was to get things ironed so that we’d have napkins and linens should we do any spur of the moment entertaining.
I was about two-thirds of the way through the basket when the movie ended. Frankly, it gave me such a boost that I sent Dear Husband off to bed and took care of the dinner dishes on my own.
I also did three loads of laundry, cleaned off the counters, finished a little office work, and planned the chores that needed to be done today. By then, it was 1:00 and seriously past my bedtime.
I can feel my “clock” getting out of sync with my life. I almost had the 5:00 rising down pat, when I stayed up until 2:00 in the morning. It only takes one of those days to wipe out all your good intentions. I’m on a medication that makes a good eight hours of sleep almost a necessity, and it’s hard to do when you’re up until 2:00 and you have to be out of the house by 8:00.
Still, I feel very virtuous about having gotten so much done. It spilled over to my day today, and kept right on through the evening. Tomorrow, we start wrapping gifts, so I’m glad that I got so much cleared off my plate.