The Birthday Post

A birthday was had, with dashes of excitement, drama, and delight, plus some wonderful friends. I am presently cameraless (no idea where the evil thing has got to), so am dependent on other nice people for photos. Hence, sadly, no piccies here. Well, one, thanks to Mel. Here I am pretending to stick a candle up my nose.













On Saturday itself, I bought myself some art,



















plus a secondhand chair - an amazing leather recliner + ottoman - that is now gracing my bachelor with its gorgeous, jade-green presence. I think it'll be more t's chair than mine; we'll likely see much happy-bear sleeping taking place in its leathery softness.


The big deal of the day was my long-anticipated birthday do at the Rosewater Supper Club. Mmmm - their amazing bar menu. The swanky lounge. Judging by the photo, you'd figure the whole thing was perfect. But if you look closely at my happy face, you'll see that my smile is a tad tremulous, and I've got big doe eyes.

Here's the short rundown: I'd been planning my birthday party for a couple of months. Bragged about how cool the Rosewater menu was to everyone and felt generally pleased and excited about the whole thing. Called in advance to confirm we'd be in the lounge (they don't take reservations for the lounge), and all seemed well.

So I show up early to ensure we have tables, and the bartendrix is confused that I don't have a restaurant reservation and I want to eat off the bar menu. Tom's sister and niece show first, followed by my mum and Tom. The server brings the menu - and it's totally changed. New chef, so bye-bye old menu. The new one is boring as snot. A few salads and other things (mostly fishy) - no mini-burgers, no portobello frites, no poutine, nary a cheese platter in sight. I falter, but rally slightly in spite of my disappointment. Then the server says they'll have to move us at some point because swanky film festival people are more important than we are. I quietly lose my composure. I'm humiliated that my carefully-planned party - a big deal for me, given all that I've gone through in the last couple of years - has just gone BLAM in my face. I almost ran out in tears.

The server could see I was upset, and she felt terrible, so she did everything she could to make it right. The manager on duty was a horrid woman, but the timing thing ended up being a non-issue, since the Beautiful Fancy People (tm) weren't due to arrive till 10 p.m. or so. It wasn't perfect, but it ended up being a pretty lovely evening all told. They brought us free champagne, plus a special fizzy drink for Laura, they re-created some of the dishes from the old menu for us, and brought us 2 plates of desserts at the end of the night.

Almost all the people I wanted there were able to come, including my parents, my brother and his girlfriend, Tom, his sister Sandy and Laura, and a host of stellar people from the blogiverse:
Sandi Purl and the famous Jay, Mellificent and Nathan, Fab Haley of Knitomatic fame, Sensitive Jen's Girlhole and the other famous Jason, the Divine Laura and her boyfriend whose name I can't spell so I'll call him V, and special guest redmagpie, who flew in from Calgary for the weekend to buy a fedora. Jacquinatrix, we missed you!

Everyone was so kind. It did my heart good to see so many of my favourite people enjoying one another's company in spite of the craziness. They ate my dad's food and taunted him, they drank various things and wrote me lovely notes in my book. Sandi made me cry.

I've penned thank-you cards, but it seems only fitting that I should publicly say thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for your kindness and generosity. I was truly moved by all the love and thoughtfulness.

...and because of Tom, with help from H-Star, I'm now the proud owner of a gorgeous, polished wood swift. I can now wind yarn so fast that it makes my head spin. I finally understand the raging desire that befalls new swift owners to wind everything they own right now.

I feel so blessed to know you all.
Thanks for being part of my life.
x