Today is my birthday! I have been having a great day. I had off from work and this morning I made great progress on the book I keep writing and writing about. It is in the home stretch but there were several things that had to be tied up and today I tied up a couple of those things.
Then I worked in the garden. Miraculously I have succeeded in weeding my garden and actually turning a corner on it. There is a story as to how I was able to do that, but that will have to wait for another day. But today my neighbor told me the garden looked great! I am so proud of myself!
My friend Lizzie treated me to a pedicure. I have never had a pedicure! That is another story for another day. I felt like such a princess, getting that pedicure!
And then my mom gave me these two Japanese teacups. These are beautiful delicate teacups and saucers from Occupied Japan.
I know, my mom passed away a couple of years ago. But that does not mean she cannot give me a birthday present!
What happened was, there was this grungy box in my garage. I found it a few days ago when I began my gardening and was looking for weed clippers.
I was not thrilled to find this box. I figured out pretty quick what it was. It was stuff from my mom's house, a box my brother George had brought over and stashed there when he thought I was not looking. Either that or probably he told me, who knows. I am the keeper of the family junk so what nobody else wanted ended up with me.
There were things in the box wrapped in newspaper from the time my mom died, which is how I was able to put two and two together. Plus, I recognized these mushroom salt and pepper shakers. There was this one garage sale where someone was selling off a Smithsonian-sized collection of salt and pepper shakers. My mom and I decided we would both select one pair. We had fun choosing. I chose these cute light bulb shaped shakers. Howard has them now downtown at Big Blue. My mom had chosen the mushrooms and now here they were, in my garage.
That kind of made me sad. So did the other stuff. There were some OK things but nothing great that I saw, and all I could think was, now I am stuck with this stuff, I an sentimental about it and so I will have to make room for it somehow.
However.
Today I felt obliged to go back to the box, clean it out. And I found a Japanese teacup. So beautiful, this delicate blue and white and gold. I washed it up and then I found a saucer that went with it.
This is pretty cool, I thought. I love Japanese things. It comes from my liking for bento boxes. Then... it was funny but something told me there was another teacup in that box. I went out and gingerly, because you had better believe this box was grungy, I began digging around.
What did I find but another teacup, in another pattern!
And, after a little more digging, a matching saucer!
I washed these treasures carefully and then started gloating over them, admiring them from one angle and then another, the way you do when you get a present you love. I thought of how I would use them, how I would show them off to my friends.
Then I remembered it was my birthday. I had found this on exactly my birthday.
I got a birthday present from my mom!
I have this tradition with myself that goes way back. I get birthday presents out of nowhere. Once I found a black dress, in my size, on the sidewalk on my birthday. I had just said I wanted a dress like that and there it was. This morning when I woke up I was wondering if I would get something out of nowhere, this being my birthday.
I did!!
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