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Today is Sherri's birthday. She's 74. One more year and it'll be another major milestone. It really doesn't seem like that long ago we had the Easter / 70th birthday celebration, but it was four years ago, 2022. That was when Shobhit and I gave Dad and Sherri covid. Good times!
I managed to get a birthday card out to her on time, even though she won't see it for another several days. She and Dad are on a Mexican cruise with Gina and Angel right now. I sent Sherri some texts this morning, but I have no idea whether they can receive texts while on a cruise in international waters. Maybe if they go onshore for an excursion? I have no idea. I sent her four animated gifs, all of them boat- or sailing-related. My favorite is the one I sent last, an animated sailboat on ocean waves with a flag fying from its mast that reads HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and the caption at the bottom reads, A GENTLE BREEZE, CALM SEAS, AND A SMOOTH SAIL INTO ANOTHER YEAR! I kind of love that and really hope she sees it while she's on the cruise ship.
2027 will see the 75th birthday for a whole lot of people I know. Sherri, Barbara, Gail (Danielle's mom), Janine (Gabriel's mom), even my Uncle Garth even though he lives in Cheyenne and I don't know him well at all. It would have seen Mom's 75th birthay as well but she passed away in 2020 at the age of 68. I was telling people she was 67 recently for some reason, but I just did the math and she was definitely 68. Her birthday would have been less than a month before she died, and I did call her to wish her a Happy Birthday that day, and spoke to her for 40 minutes. It occurs to me just now that this would have been the last conversation I ever had with her. There was no mention of her again in my blog until her stroke on the 18th of June; she was never conscious again after that; and she died on July 1.
It's always kind of a trip to revisit old posts from that time—both in regards to the months-long surreality of covid, and dealing with the death of Mom. It'll be six years since she died on July 1, and while I don't dwell on it much in my day to day life, things like this are a consistently vivid reminder of what a dividing line that is in the course of my life. It really alters your very experience of reality when one of your parents dies, even when the relationship was as complicated as Mom's and mine was.
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In completely unrelated news, I took myself to Steamworks last night. It wasn't the worst visit I've ever had, but it was closer to it than it was to the best visit. I very nearly went home without anything happening at all. Eventually, after about two and a half hours, I got something sort of close to what I needed.
It was shockingly busy there last night, I'll say that much. It's always a mixed bag when a lot of people are there. Anyway, I walked home after that and then Shobhit and I watched the season finale of
The Pitt on HBO Max and that was probably the bigger highlight of my evening.
I'll be seeing a movie right after work today, and this weekend is a very rare one in which I have no social engagements—except with Shobhit: I want to re-ride the Link Light Rail Line 2 to Redmond so I can catch all the public art I missed when I went with Laney. As far as I can tell, there's about 10 of them I still need to find. Anyway, we'll probably do that on Saturday.
I suppose one last thing I can mention is my 1:1 meeting with Gabby today, which will be the last until after my Birth Week vacation, because she herself is on PTO from Wednesday next week through Wednesday the following week (which is my Birth Week), and I thus shared a rundown of all my Birth Week plans. This will sort-of include a post-Birth Week epilogue of sorts; Gabby has invited Shobhit and me to dinner at her and Nick's house in Edmonds on Tuesday the week after
that, which happens to be Cinco de Mayo. She's taken to calling it "Cinco de Matthew," which cracks me up.
We made a plan for Shobhit to meet us at the office that day, Gabby will drive us to her house, and then they will drop us off at the Lynnwood City Center light rail station afterward. This way we can have the margaritas they also plan to make, and not have to worry about driving afterward.
I have a lot to look forward to this year. The biggest of them begins with my Birth Week, which begins one week from now. I haven't taken any PTO since the holidays, and now a solid four months without any time off has gone by; for the rest of the year, with my yearly seven weeks of PTO, it's going to be pretty regular—one or more days off every month, and usually more than one. I'm ready and I'm excited!
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[posted 12:37pm]
