monday birthday haze

Our big tree out front is not as glorious as it was last year. It seems to be settling in for yellows and browns with only hints of orange and red.

When I sit at my desk in the sun school room I can look through the open front door at the light filtering through and feel like maybe there is a god (just kidding, I know there's a god. Sorry God.)

But I couldn't get a picture that really reflected the light the way it really and truly is so I gave up and just went outside and took two hundred pictures in the way that one does now, fingers barely registering the fact that a picture is being taken. Sometimes I do miss the old formality of taking a real picture, setting it all up and being so careful, because it used to be, in Africa with actual film, that 'there wasn't more where that came from, so be careful'. But then, when I'm trying to just snap one. single. solitary. stupid. little. stupid. picture of a child, I'm grateful for the insane ease and speed of a cell phone camera. 

And I'm grateful that the little bit of orange on my tree faces the window so that as far as I know, sitting at my desk, the whole tree might as well be this beautiful, even though it isn't this year.

And I'm grateful for Matt whose birthday is today. Every year I'm so grateful that he survived his wild and foolish youth and that he's so sensible and alive now. I've been asking for the last week what he'd like to do, you know, for 'fun'. So far he's agreed to eat a whole second egg for his birthday breakfast. Every other day he limits himself to one egg for breakfast, and a tiny cold piece of chicken for lunch. So I can see that today is going to be a day of riotous and unbridled living. Happy Birthday Sweetums! May this be your best year yet!