Tag: birthdays

50

On By Luther M. SilerIn life4 Comments

I appear to not have taken a proper selfie on my actual 40th birthday, but my brother’s wedding was in late June of 2016, so we’re going to let that one be close enough. Other than the beard, I’m really not sure I look a whole lot different, but who knows.

We are not really doing a lot to celebrate. I spent the morning reading, which is not exactly an abnormal activity for me, and I just watched Norway beat Brazil, and I’m really hoping to watch Mexico trounce England in a couple of hours. In between, there will be burgers and more reading. I am nothing if not predictable.

Oh, and because my wife is the greatest of wives and the greatest of women, I get to feed capybaras next weekend. Which makes this the greatest birthday since the one where I got to pet a rhino. I wanted to go skydiving for my 50th birthday, but it turns out you can be too fat to skydive, and I am, indeed, too fat to skydive. And it wasn’t by like 10 or 20 pounds, either, where I could have done some sort of crash diet thing; nah, it’s by a large percentage of a normal human’s body weight. So that’s not a thing that’s going to happen absent a plane crash.

I was also really hoping something horrible would happen to someone horrible last night, and it didn’t happen. There’s still time left in the day, though, right? Come on, little blood clot. Do your thing.

BLeurgh

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

That capital L was originally a typo, but I’m keeping it because it feels appropriate.

Tomorrow is my son’s fourteenth birthday, meaning that I left a building where I had been teaching 8th graders all day and came home to a house with four extra 8th graders in it. Tomorrow we are going to a local Renaissance festival, at his request.

I have officially had one of the best first weeks of school of my entire career, and am nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop. That said, if it’s coming today, it had better be fast, as I’m going to bed early as hell tonight.

48

On By Luther M. SilerIn life10 Comments

Enjoy the obligatory birthday selfie; I did remember when I got dressed this morning that for both of the previous birthday selfies I had the same shirt on, and I considered putting that shirt on for the third year in a row and rejected the idea. 48 is entirely too fucking close to fifty for my comfort and I don’t like it one bit. I had to get my drivers license renewed earlier this week and dear god the only way I could look more like a white supremacist in that picture is if I had an actual swastika tattooed on my face. See how I’m clearly holding the camera above my head and looking up? That’s my angle. They made me look down for the DL picture. It did not go well.

Anyway.

We went to Indianapolis today; we went to the IKEA in Fishers and the Lego store, and I fought back against my advanced age by spending entirely too much fucking money for Lego sets that I don’t have anywhere to put once I build them. We’re going to ignore the fact that I can only afford the Goddamn toys I bought today by virtue of being an old person.

Oh, and we found a Tesla overflow lot, completely by accident:

It is genuinely difficult to convey just how much fucking uglier these things are in person. They’re absurdly large, the interior is shit, and the whole thing is so snub-nosed that even if it weren’t designed like a PS1 car brought to life it would still look ridiculous. Also, while I admit I have never once in my life complained about “build quality” on any other vehicle, it took less than a minute of looking at the car in the picture to notice this:

Those pieces of trim are more or less flush on the left and you can get a finger in the gap on the right. It’s not the angle of the picture, I swear. Those are the pieces that keep blowing off of the car at high speeds, too. Also, we got there just after a rainstorm, as you can see, and I’m wondering if anyone has to come over from the dealership to wipe the rainwater off the damn cars so they don’t rust.

Anyway. I’d say “on to 49,” but let’s try surviving through November first.

In which I’m not here

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I just got home from a day trip to the northern suburbs of Chicago for my niece’s first birthday party; as my brother is not comfortable with me posting pictures of his children to my blog (which I understand completely, for the record) please allow as a substitute this most excellent picture of his dog Jack that my son took. Jack, you will not be surprised to learn, is a Good Boy.

Take bets in comments on whether I’ll make it through a single day of my big summer plan before it falls apart.

Your what now?

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

My son’s eleventh birthday party was today, and he and his friends from Hogwarts had a laser tag party. This note from one of said friends was tucked into a card, and I would love to know if that kid’s mom vetted the note or not.

Either way I think I’m kinda scared.

On my ten-year Dadiversary

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting1 Comment

I don’t have specific memories of many of my birthdays, at least not without sitting down and thinking hard about it. My 21st, which probably wasn’t as exciting as you think it was. My 22nd, which happened while I was in Israel. My 16th, where my family managed to arrange a surprise pool party for me. And my 10th, where I remember being very unhappy for at least part of it, and very upset that whatever was upsetting me had dared to intrude on my “double digit day.”

Do I remember what I was upset about? Not a bit. I don’t have even the vaguest idea, and I’ve been kind of racking my brain about it for the last few days. It could have been my fault; perhaps I was being a shithead that day, and pissed my parents off. Something may have had to be cancelled, or maybe I didn’t get something I really wanted. No idea at all. And I’m pretty sure my Dad will see this, and I’ll be surprised if he remembers either– if he does, I’ll let y’all know. I just remember being upset.

My son turns 10 tomorrow. The three of us went out and went shopping today and blew all of his birthday money– close to a couple hundred dollars, when you roll in everybody who sent him something– and we came home with a pretty respectable haul, for a 10-year-old: a couple of Lego sets, a couple of Switch games, five or six books (he is my kid, after all) and a ridiculous new Nerf gun with a bloody ammo drum attached to it that I’m terrified he’s going to turn on me the next time I walk into the same room with him. Plus $25 in Roblox money that he can spend on nonsense digital stuff. Surprisingly, he did not want to go to the comic shop and buy a bunch of blind boxes.

Weird, to think we’ve been parents for ten years. Weirder, to think that his last couple of birthdays have been fucked up by Covid. He wanted to have a birthday party at a local trampoline park this year; we had to tell him no. He didn’t even ask last year. I think we’ll try and get some of his friends over next weekend to frolic in the pool for a few hours, though, if the weather cooperates.

I don’t know that I have any more complicated observations than that; I think so far his 10th birthday is going better than mine did, even if I don’t remember why, and I’m feeling a deep melancholy at the idea that my little boy is growing up.

(And just to keep this post from being completely sappy, in the process of getting his gift card transferred to his Roblox account, I discovered that the young master appears to have figured out how to delete his YouTube history. I will wait until after his birthday to perform the necessary interrogations about that, however.)

EDITED TO ADD: My father suspects that the USS FLAGG, or rather my lack of same, may have been the culprit. I looked and discovered that yes, in fact, the Flagg was available in 1985-86, which means it was out there for buying on my 10th birthday. I can only say that as the goddamned thing was seven and a half feet long and something north of $200 in 2020-equivalent funds, I’d have let my kid sit on the couch and cry too. That said, if anyone wants to buy me one to make up for my childhood trauma, I am an adult now who lives in a house, and I will make room for the motherfucker.

45

On By Luther M. SilerIn life5 Comments

I have had worse birthdays.

(I have rarely had better presents– in thirteen days, I get to pet a rhinoceros. My wife is amazing.)

A possibly relevant anecdote

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

A note: I am writing this immediately after the post from last night, and the way things are going it is entirely possible that events will have rendered this post out of date by the time it pops. Today is my mother’s first birthday since she passed away in January, and the immediate family is getting together, so I won’t be around, thus the pre-written post. Which at this point is going to be shorter than the disclaimer.

Further, if something does happen and I suddenly start talking about having converted to some major world religion or another, you know why.

I have been thinking about this story for a good chunk of the day: A good friend’s stepfather passed away several years ago. I feel like it was Parkinson’s, but if it wasn’t it was something similar; one of those terrible wasting sorts of diseases that always come with a life expectancy, sometimes expressed in months and sometimes in years, and sometimes can be managed, and sometimes cannot. I remember finding out he had this disease, and asking my friend how long the doctors had said he had.

My friend gave me a number, and then paused, thinking about it. “He’s not got that long,” he said. “There’s no fight in him.” And, indeed, he was gone fairly quickly after the diagnosis.

And, honestly, I can’t think of anyone with less fight in them than the person in the White House Walter Reed Hospital.