In which Pooh learns a very important lesson

I had an amazingly wonderful day yesterday and learned such an important lesson, the writing of which seems to be such a trite and obvious one.  Each day is that which we make of it.  I expected that Jamie and the kids would forget it was my birthday; that is generally how it works, and they did.  But it was a wonderful day nonetheless.  I was not disappointed, and spent the day doing the normal stuff; the dishes, the laundry, moving 18,370 tonnes of grava to the back and front yard, swimming in the sea.  And it was so good.  It was a GREAT day mainly because I decided it would be.  Jamie and I have been moving the twin mountains of Calica and Grava to the backyard.  We have SO MUCH that we have also been doing the front area and have been filling in holes in the road with our excess.  We’ll probably do our neighbors front yards with grava also.  Fourteen cubic meters of material is a freaking LOT of material.  My upper back and shoulders are aching this morning and I think it is because we traded jobs; I shoveled and Jamie carried the wheelbarrow.  At the end of the day we rewarded ourselves with swims.  I took to the sea and the rest to the pool.  It was amazing being alone in the sea; no waves, just rolling gentle waves, rain softly falling and all the dirt and sweat from the days toil simply washing away.

Around 11:30pm Jamie noticed Dad’s congratulations on my last post and freaked out.  I was completely unable to communicate how blissful my day had been, forgotten or not (in absolute contrast to my forgotten 16th birthday) and it was not the least bit necessary to make today a “do-over”.

Our neighbors have come into town, Ian and Deb from Canada, and they are going to help us dispense despensas on Saturday.  I’m really looking forward to the help and taking a week off of despensas has been so wonderful.  The bodega/recamera is really coming together and we’re starting to talk about furniture.  I’ll post before and after pictures of the backyard; so many people kept telling us, “just hire a Mexican; they’ll do that for $20″ but here in the park it is hard to get someone to show up and honestly, moving the 58,993 tonnes of material to the backyard was better than a gym workout.