My 44th birthday was a good day

Yesterday was my 44th birthday. 🎉

Great expectations

I realised I felt a little internal pressure to do something amazing, wonderful, or remarkable. I just couldn’t think of anything. In the past, I watched “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” on my birthday as a sort of personal birthday tradition.

I still love that movie, but didn’t really feel like watching it this time around. I briefly thought about watching “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” instead, but I’ve watched that amazing movie recently.

Birthdays are strange days for me. I enjoy my birthday, even though I’m ambivalent about growing older, and between my friends and family wishing me a terrific day, saying I should do something remarkable, and be spoiled, I realised that I put a little pressure on myself to do something noteworthy.

Ultimately, though, this day is really more of a “me” day when I get to take a breather from work, and indulge myself in some small way.

Taking a “me” day

As is my custom, I took the day off for a “me” day.

The only thing I had planned for the day was to head to Cafe Greg in the mall for a Diabetic friendly apple crumble.

I started off my day with breakfast (as one does), after which I took advantage of the quiet to meditate for around 15 minutes (by “meditate”, I mean continuously try calm my chattering mind for 15 minutes), and then switch to Netflix.

I’ve been watching The Crown, and finished off the second season, and started the third before heading out to the mall. I took my camera with me, and captured a few scenes along the way. Winter is settling in here in Israel, and that means very welcome rain, and colder weather.

The apple crumble was pretty good, and I returned home for more of The Crown before the kids returned home. We had lunch together, I went out to the post office to collect a package that turned out to be one of Aaron’s birthday presents that I thought wasn’t going to arrive, and then returned home for more of The Crown.

All in all, it wasn’t a wild celebratory day, but it was my day, and that worked for me.

I had Gina and the kids with me. Aaron made me this awesome card, and Faith made me a Minecraft world to play around with, and involved a lot of cake at the end. Interestingly, when you eat cake (and probably other things) in Minecraft, you eat it in slices. 🎂

Also a Gina day

The real, big news of the day was that Gina started her new job yesterday, after six months searching for work.

Its been an extremely wild 6 months. It was fun. It was stressful. It was enlightening. I got to spend time with Paul, even though he was working during the week. I got to eat lunch with my entire family, every day. I played games with the kids, took them to the park after school and helped with homework. I got to spend the entire summer break and all the Jewish holidays with the kids and Paul. I fell into a funk, especially after each rejection email from a potential job opportunity. I worked through each funk. I started running (and need to get back into it). I taught myself a new skill. I read. A lot.

Gina’s post about her last six months

I enjoyed having Gina around the last few months. I’m also really proud of her for persevering, and ultimately succeeding. You can read her post about the last six months here: “6 months in numbers – A Bit of This A Bit of That“.