34

No, not 34 blankie squares. We'll talk about that tomorrow night, hopefully. 34 years. I'm getting old, and every year just goes faster. It hardly even felt like a birthday today, and we had a fairly blah day me and the girls and our colds.

But Joe came home, and he took us out to dinner at the Edina Grill, an upscale diner that we love. I had sweet potato french fries, which I shared with the girls, and seafood macaroni and cheese, which when I asked the waitress about it, she described as "love in a bowl". I'm always a bit leery about creamy pasta dishes since the one time many years ago Joe and I were at a fancy resort on the north shore of Lake Superior, and the alfredo dish I ordered was so gloppy I couldn't eat it. The evil waitress that evening refused to bring me anything else, and I went to bed that night hungry. That time sucked, but tonight did not. Tonight, I agreed with the waitress that my dinner was "love in a bowl" - it was that good, and the pint of Summit EPA tasted just fine with it too.

So, it wasn't a bad birthday after all. Eating out with the girls is always fun and "fun". Fun because we the girls get lots of admiring looks from our fellow guests. It's nice to go out in public as a family because when Joe is there, I don't feel all bristly wondering whether the next person giving us a warm smile is going to ask me what country they came from. "Fun" because it involves training them in appropriate table manners for restaurants, which along with being slightly more stringent than those at home, are all the harder to obey because there are so many interesting things on the table to tempt them, and such a big audience of people to notice when they make a scene. Tonight we did just fine, although Sophie was in and out of the high chair several times.

I was very full after eating most of my dinner, and wasn't going to order dessert, but I kept thinking about the fabulous brownie sundae they serve there, so I ended up ordering one to go at the last minute, which meant that we had to wait a little longer with the girls than was best...but the nice manager lady gave it to us for free! So when I'm done writing this, I'm going to go pig out on brownie sundae, watch the last episode of 24 on that DVD, and cuddle with the blankie. I have a bit of a blankie surprise for tomorrow - something slightly different than X more squares. I know you just can't wait, but you'll have to.