on the subject of birthdays and party trees
First off, thank you to the internet at large, oh my for your lovely birthday wishes, which I am still processing and sorting through, especially as both my brain and my wireless are a bit fuzzy at the moment. (Midway through yesterday I realised how terrifyingly sleepy I was; fortunately it was a rather nice sleepy.)
I fluttered awake early to a cloud-gauzy sky, and after trying in vain for ten minutes to be sensible and go back to sleep -- I had only slept six hours -- I sat up and promptly dove for lady_moriel's package, which had been at the foot of my bed for several days. Kyra sends the splendidest parcels of delightful miscellany -- this year's included a fetching little wooden box filled with lovely bits and bobs of jewellery and hair things (and pins: a panda with monocle and moustache, and a penny farthing!), HOGWARTS T-SHIRT YES INDEED, white lace gloves, and a fabulous mess of socks and stockings including multi-patterned knee socks like the ones I always used to long for in the Hanna Anderson catalogues we used to get, except that those were a) deeply expensive, and b) only came in children's sizes. And when I wandered down for my coffee and to greet my mother, there was a package from barefoottomboy waiting outside the door: books, and more stockings (I am amused that my friends bought me socks and stockings: but I love them so!), and BERGAMOT PERFUME SUCH WONDERS THIS WORLD CONTAINS and my very own teacup and saucer (and dessert plate!) at last, eeee! You two are entirely too splendid and dear.
So I spent a pleasant morning and afternoon admiring my pretties and making my cake -- my mother mixed up the batter, but I wanted a rainbow cake, so I did the rest, and it came out beautifully, and very delicious. I have always wanted a birthday crown, also, so I made one, while I was tracing and cutting out paper stars for the party tree. So there was another pleasant half an hour while I twined pearl ropes through leaves and tied stars and balloons to tree branches with purple ribbon and watched them bobbing sweetly in the little summer breezes.
burningstarsxe and goddessreason arrived in the afternoon, and we had a merry time of it, spreading my old quilt under the made-ready party tree and taking tea in mismatched cups while balloons bobbed over our heads and a ladybug and some spiders came calling.
(My mother thought she was taking photographs when she was actually taking video, but I rather love the weird, memory-blurred quality of my edited screengrabs.)
We had to bring the cake inside for a few minutes, as the wind kept blowing out the candles before we could get them all lighted, and Hannah tinkled out a melody on the piano as mother, sisters, and friends sang a happy birthday to me. Then we took it outside to the romance of the party tree and the sunlight to cut it.
I brought my laptop out, and we watched "Once More, With Feeling" and sang along to all of the songs (because, of course, we know all the words by heart), and I opened my present, a magnificent jaunty little hat, rich blue, with a peacock feather and great lovely blue feathers sprouting out and a birdcage veil, and I do believe that Sarah has got the photographs of it, but it is marvellous and I want to have someplace to wear it (besides in the house, as I have been doing) right now.
We played Forehead Sticky Things, which is our very intelligent name for the old parlour game where you put bits of paper into a hat (or a teacup, in this case) with the names of well-known people, real or fictional, and everyone gets one and licks it so it will stick to the forehead and must then try to guess whose name they've been adorned with. We love that game and have not played it in far too long. Alas, after that they had to leave for the theatre (ack, just realised I've missed tonight's showing; it looks as though I am going to see them tomorrow night then), but Dad and Tim(my -- Tim is my father's name, and even though my brother is sixteen and can't really be called Timmy any more I have great difficulty calling him Tim, because it already belongs to someone) finally got home from their camping trip, and so they unpacked and I read and Mum made dinner, and by this time I was pleasantly dizzy with lack of sleep.
Also there were presents. About which I am thrilled. My parents are awesome people. First, a beautiful hand-made scarf I had admired at one of the stalls at Merlefest last year and the year before, and I cannot wait to take it out dancing, because it jingles melodiously with every movement. (Plus, the woman in charge of the stall -- I think she was Tibetan? -- was so friendly and marvellous, and I remember her telling me where various things she sold had come from, and it just makes me happy that they bought her merchandise.)
AND. ANDANDAND.
HECK YES RECORD PLAYER.
I have wanted this forever. It is beautiful and has spectacular sound, and plays radio and tapes and CDs also and aljshdfkjhkjsfdh. (Now I need more records. Alas that modern ones are so expensive -- I'd love, say, some Decemberists, or the Swell Season's Strict Joy, or Laura Gibson's Beasts of Seasons, or Lisa Hannigan's Sea Sew, all of which I found on eBay, but not cheap. I may buy some Steeleye Span, though -- old records are cheap, so long as they aren't rare.) ANYWAY IT IS WONDERFUL.
Dad also got me CDs, as we always do for each other -- the Duhks, and Mick McAuley (Solas' accordionist and sometimes whistle-player, a great burly Irishman with long hair and an earring and the most beautiful, melodic, yet deep and rough, voice), and siblings got me chocolate and a loaf of French bread (don't laugh, I love it!), and after dinner there was a lovely pale crescent moon over the church spires, which was good for several reasons: one, because I love crescent moons, and two, because I then knew I needn’t fear being savaged by werewolves on my birthday. So while the sky went dark I lay under the party tree for a bit and listened to Linford Detweiler's storytelling piano and Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson's "Winter Song" -- which has, absurdly, always been a summer song for me...
I set incense (opium-scented, apparently WHAT IT'S FOR NOVEL-WRITING ATMOSPHERE OKAY) burning in a tea tin and the candelabra lit up, and curled up with music playing from my dresser and Madeleine L’Engle’s Two-Part Invention and sister’s chocolates. It was a good day.
--
Being twenty is odd, though. It seems absurdly far away from nineteen. I don't feel any different -- and yet I do. I feel that I am a Grown-Up now, and while I needn't give up wearing paper crowns and turning into a puddle when James Marsters sings, I feel that I ought to... carry myself differently. Perhaps be less frivolous in the bad sorts of ways. I don't know. It is very peculiar.
I fluttered awake early to a cloud-gauzy sky, and after trying in vain for ten minutes to be sensible and go back to sleep -- I had only slept six hours -- I sat up and promptly dove for lady_moriel's package, which had been at the foot of my bed for several days. Kyra sends the splendidest parcels of delightful miscellany -- this year's included a fetching little wooden box filled with lovely bits and bobs of jewellery and hair things (and pins: a panda with monocle and moustache, and a penny farthing!), HOGWARTS T-SHIRT YES INDEED, white lace gloves, and a fabulous mess of socks and stockings including multi-patterned knee socks like the ones I always used to long for in the Hanna Anderson catalogues we used to get, except that those were a) deeply expensive, and b) only came in children's sizes. And when I wandered down for my coffee and to greet my mother, there was a package from barefoottomboy waiting outside the door: books, and more stockings (I am amused that my friends bought me socks and stockings: but I love them so!), and BERGAMOT PERFUME SUCH WONDERS THIS WORLD CONTAINS and my very own teacup and saucer (and dessert plate!) at last, eeee! You two are entirely too splendid and dear.
So I spent a pleasant morning and afternoon admiring my pretties and making my cake -- my mother mixed up the batter, but I wanted a rainbow cake, so I did the rest, and it came out beautifully, and very delicious. I have always wanted a birthday crown, also, so I made one, while I was tracing and cutting out paper stars for the party tree. So there was another pleasant half an hour while I twined pearl ropes through leaves and tied stars and balloons to tree branches with purple ribbon and watched them bobbing sweetly in the little summer breezes.
burningstarsxe and goddessreason arrived in the afternoon, and we had a merry time of it, spreading my old quilt under the made-ready party tree and taking tea in mismatched cups while balloons bobbed over our heads and a ladybug and some spiders came calling.
(My mother thought she was taking photographs when she was actually taking video, but I rather love the weird, memory-blurred quality of my edited screengrabs.)
We had to bring the cake inside for a few minutes, as the wind kept blowing out the candles before we could get them all lighted, and Hannah tinkled out a melody on the piano as mother, sisters, and friends sang a happy birthday to me. Then we took it outside to the romance of the party tree and the sunlight to cut it.
I brought my laptop out, and we watched "Once More, With Feeling" and sang along to all of the songs (because, of course, we know all the words by heart), and I opened my present, a magnificent jaunty little hat, rich blue, with a peacock feather and great lovely blue feathers sprouting out and a birdcage veil, and I do believe that Sarah has got the photographs of it, but it is marvellous and I want to have someplace to wear it (besides in the house, as I have been doing) right now.
We played Forehead Sticky Things, which is our very intelligent name for the old parlour game where you put bits of paper into a hat (or a teacup, in this case) with the names of well-known people, real or fictional, and everyone gets one and licks it so it will stick to the forehead and must then try to guess whose name they've been adorned with. We love that game and have not played it in far too long. Alas, after that they had to leave for the theatre (ack, just realised I've missed tonight's showing; it looks as though I am going to see them tomorrow night then), but Dad and Tim(my -- Tim is my father's name, and even though my brother is sixteen and can't really be called Timmy any more I have great difficulty calling him Tim, because it already belongs to someone) finally got home from their camping trip, and so they unpacked and I read and Mum made dinner, and by this time I was pleasantly dizzy with lack of sleep.
Also there were presents. About which I am thrilled. My parents are awesome people. First, a beautiful hand-made scarf I had admired at one of the stalls at Merlefest last year and the year before, and I cannot wait to take it out dancing, because it jingles melodiously with every movement. (Plus, the woman in charge of the stall -- I think she was Tibetan? -- was so friendly and marvellous, and I remember her telling me where various things she sold had come from, and it just makes me happy that they bought her merchandise.)
AND. ANDANDAND.
HECK YES RECORD PLAYER.
I have wanted this forever. It is beautiful and has spectacular sound, and plays radio and tapes and CDs also and aljshdfkjhkjsfdh. (Now I need more records. Alas that modern ones are so expensive -- I'd love, say, some Decemberists, or the Swell Season's Strict Joy, or Laura Gibson's Beasts of Seasons, or Lisa Hannigan's Sea Sew, all of which I found on eBay, but not cheap. I may buy some Steeleye Span, though -- old records are cheap, so long as they aren't rare.) ANYWAY IT IS WONDERFUL.
Dad also got me CDs, as we always do for each other -- the Duhks, and Mick McAuley (Solas' accordionist and sometimes whistle-player, a great burly Irishman with long hair and an earring and the most beautiful, melodic, yet deep and rough, voice), and siblings got me chocolate and a loaf of French bread (don't laugh, I love it!), and after dinner there was a lovely pale crescent moon over the church spires, which was good for several reasons: one, because I love crescent moons, and two, because I then knew I needn’t fear being savaged by werewolves on my birthday. So while the sky went dark I lay under the party tree for a bit and listened to Linford Detweiler's storytelling piano and Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson's "Winter Song" -- which has, absurdly, always been a summer song for me...
I set incense (opium-scented, apparently WHAT IT'S FOR NOVEL-WRITING ATMOSPHERE OKAY) burning in a tea tin and the candelabra lit up, and curled up with music playing from my dresser and Madeleine L’Engle’s Two-Part Invention and sister’s chocolates. It was a good day.
--
Being twenty is odd, though. It seems absurdly far away from nineteen. I don't feel any different -- and yet I do. I feel that I am a Grown-Up now, and while I needn't give up wearing paper crowns and turning into a puddle when James Marsters sings, I feel that I ought to... carry myself differently. Perhaps be less frivolous in the bad sorts of ways. I don't know. It is very peculiar.