seventy

(My mother dressed as Plumdolph, Santa's little purple reindeer who saved Xmas through relentless holiday baking [2001])

My mother turns 70 today. I called her last night to wish her a pre-emptive happy birthday, and I asked if she was excited to be turning the big seven-oh. "Yeah, Jeremy, I'm really looking forward to it," she said, deadpan, "I can't wait." And then, with just the right amount of rue: "You wait until you turn 70." I love my mother.

(Also, although my sister did put an icon on her desktop so she can look at my blog with just a click of her mouse, she does not sound like she has any inclination to do so. She has, however, been recently entranced by this bowling game that someone sent her the link to. My father, on the other hand, didn't find bowling interesting and continues to stick resolutely to his two games--solitaire and Spider solitaire--which has plays for more than an hour each day. My mom reported that he only recently discovered that the thing in solitaire, where if you win and go through the steps of moving the cards to the top, it does an animation of the cards shuffling on the screen. My father has now become convinced that this results in the cards actually being "shuffled" better and increases your probability of winning the following game. Longtime readers may recall this is not the first time my father has seemed not to fully understand the difference between 'physical' and 'virtual' reality.)