Forty
I turned forty yesterday… sometime before March I threw out that my fortieth birthday would be nice if it was anchored in beer and board games - get a bunch of people who like one or more of those things and want to celebrate with me and make a day of it.
We had a scale down a bit but both of those things happened (not all at the same time) - Elizabeth and the kids had gotten Gaïa and I played a couple of rounds with Oscar and Ada after breakfast. The standard game feels like it's a bit to draw-dependent with few interesting decisions or back-and-forth opportunities, but the advanced version (especially minus the mean cards - volcanoes and thunderbolts in our game made it so that you kind of had to ride out the violence and then play in earnest once everyone was out of ammunition) is a nicely-balanced short game.
The kids gifted me with many supervillain-themed pictures, a felt medal and a hat made from a pop bottle with an antenna and googly eyes.
In the middle of the day we had a backyard party. Elizabeth had made lime meringue tarts, we barbecued some veggie sausages, we took cover when it rained :) Heather, Andrea and Morgen came for the first while until Morgen needed her own bed for a nap, and my folks turned up as they were heading out. It was the first time this year I've seen my parents in person. I hope we can figure out a visit down there; either a day trip on a nice day or a weekend if we can tinker with our bubble configuration or get to a better place in the pandemic.
Turning forty has been kind of overshadowed by the circumstances. I'm no longer young in the terms of my union, I guess when it seems prudent I'm due for a medical check-up. Ten years ago Oscar was still in utero and I was a young and promising Methodologist, more I'm more established and shifting to be a manager and Oscar's going to be a teenager before long. I'm more readily out as bi and polyamorous and organizing workplace things for Pubic Service Pride (which wasn't really a thing in the Federal Public Service ten years ago). I'm trying to be a bit more conscious of taking care of my body - choosier about food and letting there be leftovers, morning walks, an actual ergonomic chair in my basement lair. I feel like negotiation is a theme of the last little while: bargaining, working out pandemic safety measures in our bubble, trying to line up a working like that's as good as possible. Stabilizing the wobbly bits of my life, too.
Maybe I'll have a bigger party for 41 or 42, but I liked being celebrated yesterday. It's a nice round number, but it feels like a kind of transitional time for me.
This is a copy of an entry on Dreamwidth. There are
comments on the original entry.
We had a scale down a bit but both of those things happened (not all at the same time) - Elizabeth and the kids had gotten Gaïa and I played a couple of rounds with Oscar and Ada after breakfast. The standard game feels like it's a bit to draw-dependent with few interesting decisions or back-and-forth opportunities, but the advanced version (especially minus the mean cards - volcanoes and thunderbolts in our game made it so that you kind of had to ride out the violence and then play in earnest once everyone was out of ammunition) is a nicely-balanced short game.
The kids gifted me with many supervillain-themed pictures, a felt medal and a hat made from a pop bottle with an antenna and googly eyes.
In the middle of the day we had a backyard party. Elizabeth had made lime meringue tarts, we barbecued some veggie sausages, we took cover when it rained :) Heather, Andrea and Morgen came for the first while until Morgen needed her own bed for a nap, and my folks turned up as they were heading out. It was the first time this year I've seen my parents in person. I hope we can figure out a visit down there; either a day trip on a nice day or a weekend if we can tinker with our bubble configuration or get to a better place in the pandemic.
Turning forty has been kind of overshadowed by the circumstances. I'm no longer young in the terms of my union, I guess when it seems prudent I'm due for a medical check-up. Ten years ago Oscar was still in utero and I was a young and promising Methodologist, more I'm more established and shifting to be a manager and Oscar's going to be a teenager before long. I'm more readily out as bi and polyamorous and organizing workplace things for Pubic Service Pride (which wasn't really a thing in the Federal Public Service ten years ago). I'm trying to be a bit more conscious of taking care of my body - choosier about food and letting there be leftovers, morning walks, an actual ergonomic chair in my basement lair. I feel like negotiation is a theme of the last little while: bargaining, working out pandemic safety measures in our bubble, trying to line up a working like that's as good as possible. Stabilizing the wobbly bits of my life, too.
Maybe I'll have a bigger party for 41 or 42, but I liked being celebrated yesterday. It's a nice round number, but it feels like a kind of transitional time for me.
This is a copy of an entry on Dreamwidth. There are
comments on the original entry.