A Birthday (and some toxic scum)

July 4, 2015March 29, 2018 by nance In Life, Writing Leave a comment

Yesterday was my birthday. It was ok. No, it was better than ok, actually. There were some great moments — hanging with friends in the morning, getting homemade birthday cards from the boys and my nephews who are living with us, and eating a perfectly excellent cake, to name a few. But Jason and I were just generally off our game and I think we were both happy to drop into bed and call it a day when it was all said and done.

We came out of the boxes strong in the morning and headed to Lake Sammamish State Park for a morning of swimming and paddle boarding with some friends. It’s been horribly hot in Seattle this week and every last one of us was fully immersed in the lake by 10am.

I know, I know, 90 degrees isn’t all that hot compared to other places in the world and we’re all wimps and whatever but here’s the thing: Seattle typically has, like, maybe 5 hot days in an entire Summer. 5! Nobody has air conditioning. We don’t have backyard pools. Some of us might have a fan stashed somewhere in the garage for those rare days of high heat but otherwise, nada.

We CAN NOT HANG with the heat, people. And it’s supposed to be ~~miserable, suck-your-life-away~~ hot for at least another week. That will make about 20 straight days of high heat and I’m starting to think we might not make it. Yesterday we had to head home by 1pm because it was too hot. Too hot at the lake where we were immersed in water.

And you know what else? It’s so hot that our lakes in Seattle are in danger of algal bloom (aka toxic scum) which can, among other lovely things, kill you. Mostly, if the bloom is present, you’ll just get parasites that burrow into your skin and then die there, leaving you to itch your skin off, but sometimes, the outcome is even worse. Isn’t that lovely?

Anyhow, back to my birthday. We came home and languished in misery in our hot house for the afternoon. Jason and I got into a petty argument because HOT but, of course, managed to make up without too much trouble because, well, BIRTHDAY. Birthday trumps hot. Mostly.

Dinner & dessert went off without a hitch. I opened the aforementioned cards and my oldest nephew even drew me a picture of a birthday cake with the caption “whoa, that’s a lot of candles!” A few of us were draped with ice packs during the meal but hey, we were hanging in there and I was thinking that maybe we had beat the heat after all.

But then, after dinner, Jason was hoping to make a cocktail and discovered that we were out of ice. Oops. The boys and I had used all the ice in our (admittedly small) ice maker that afternoon, for slow drip plant-watering and, you know, general cooling purposes. But in my guilty frenzy to help dig around in the freezer for other options, guess what I did?

I dropped my birthday cake on the kitchen floor.

Face down.

And then, in his frenzy to help me salvage the cake, Jason broke his favorite cocktail glass.

It was good times. Really. But you know, I think I’m good with this birthday being in the bag and moving on to our next week of wretched temps and horrid swelter. There are so many more dishes to break and fights to be had! And hey, so long as I avoid the toxic scum, it might actually be a good year.

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