Clint’s Birthday (Volume 46)
You already know I do not take the term “birthday” literally, but as a general idea to be celebrated at some length. Birth-month is more my style, and if I am not the honoree, I will try to persuade the person we are birthdaying into enjoying their own personal holiday for as long as humanly possible, one week at a minimum. Clint’s birthday was last week, and he indulged me by celebrating for the better part of a long weekend. What can I say? He’s the sensible one in this relationship and not prone to long bouts of revelry, even if his wife insists.
He also, unlike myself, prefers to keep these things rather low-key, and so on the actual day of his birth, he requested that we keep it simple and open gifts, have dinner at home, and eat ice cream cake. I made one of his favorite meals in honor of the occasion—taco salads—and we had ourselves some margaritas and a little fiesta to commemorate the day. It wasn’t fancy, but I will admit, it was fun.
Along with some gummy candy and other small gifts, a Georgia Tech t-shirt.
As luck would have it, his main gift (which I ordered back in June) won’t arrive until this week. It’s a custom needlepoint bichon belt!
And I just bet it will be worth the wait.
His and hers birthday desserts: a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cake for him; oatmilk non-dairy frozen dessert for me. Yum.
The pups were more than happy to lend a hand with cutting the cake (to be clear, they did not want the oatmilk. No one wants the oatmilk).
After work on Friday, we got ourselves cleaned up for a slightly-fancier-than-taco-salads dinner at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse. Because I’m not a big steak eater, birthdays are a good time for Clint to indulge and get his red meat fill, and he always resists the urge to go anywhere new or trendy. Even with all my dietary restrictions these days, we had an amazing dinner—it was a feast! As it turns out, being able to pick the lobster out of some lobster mac and cheese is not exactly a hardship (I get by).
Here we are with a table full of food: steaks, mushrooms, loaded baked potatoes, and that glorious (huge) dish of lobster macaroni and cheese.
We decided to come home and enjoy an after dinner cocktail by the firepit, where the fall weather was crisp and gorgeous.
And like my shirt says, I was in full birthday mode!
I promised the birthday boy that we could spend the rest of the weekend doing whatever he wished, and he wanted to watch college football and spend time out by the pool. If you think that meant he needed to divide his time, think again. Let me show you how he spent his Saturday:
The best of both worlds: the TV and the pool, on a birthday weekend Saturday.
I made some of Clint’s favorite snacks, we won’t discuss whether or not his football team won (ouch), and we had even more great food over the course of birthday weekend—crab cakes out on the patio Saturday night and a pizza dinner to cap off a lazy Sunday, followed by more of that ice cream cake, naturally. I think it was a happy, relaxing celebration…a tad shorter than what I would normally recommend at just four days, but much like birthdays themselves, it’s the quality, not the quantity, that counts. And I’m pretty sure that if he decides he wants to do some more celebrating at any point, I can manage that, too!
Happy birthday, Clint! 46 looks good on you!