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Body, Home, Street

As Perfect as It Gets

It wasn’t even all planned but my birthday today had an astonishing number of things going right. I’m still glowing.

I had the day off. No big deal. Mondays and Tuesdays are my usual weekend. So I slept late. No big deal. I go to work at 3 p.m. so seven days a week my clock radio keeps silent. The day started with a big smooch from My Beloved before she goes to work, with her saying an old family friend from Fort Smith just called to wish me a happy birthday.

I made an egg sandwich using my crusty, high-rising adaptation of a multigrain sourdough along with the first prewashed spinach the groceries have stocked in weeks, spritzed with Tabasco Chipotle. Ummmm.

Then it was time to drive to a matinee of Borat. (My best childhood birthday parties comprised 4-6 buddies, a movie and burgers at a drive-in afterward.) What a sunny day, after two days of rain.

The critics are wrong: Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t channeling Groucho so much as Chico. Also Chaplin in his leering moments. Cohen knows his antecedents, or he wouldn’t have including the spot-on reference to Oliver Hardy. Ethnic humor? No, anarchic, all these blokes. When comedy wins, we have hope.

Afterward there was enough afternoon before M.B.’s return so I baked. Little is more energizing than making doughs or batters. I set to “shuffle” CDs by Brave Combo and Kinky Friedman and danced in the kitchen.

After an errand, we ate dinner at Penguin Ed’s Barbecue. Vegetarian? So? A hearty portabello mushroom sandwich (Guys: Grilled and garlicky as always but next time, use real Swiss; processed Swiss is, well, cheesy) with home fries and baked beans. Reminds me of Porta’s in Fort Smith, nostalgia’s important on a birthday. Ohhhh.

On to UA to witness the consecration ceremony to begin a mandala sand painting by the visiting Tibetan Buddhist monks, one of whom is a throat singer. Ommmm. Auspicious for a birthday. It was so crowded the monks asked us to sit on the floor where we had been standing. Odors became prominent from the shoulder-to-shoulderness: Stale cigarettes in clothing. Stinky feet. Onion breath. But the spirituality was so uplifting, who cared?

A couple of adjacent cross-legged people must have gotten bored after a few minutes so they left. A woman on the other side pointed to my shoe. It was just some leaves stuck by mud to the sole. She went away. Afterward we saw people we knew. It’s nice on a birthday to run into friends. A party on a Monday being impractical, coincidence like this is next-best.

The timing was such that we could walk to the music hall for the last half of a concert of low-brass students. As a euphonium player who hasn’t picked up a horn in, oh, too long, this was thrilling. They were so good. My mind was full of sonority. On the walk back we saw a couple we knew from temple walking their new puppy. What a birthday.

Home for chocolate cake, herbal tea and presents from M.B. With cats sleeping on our laps we saw bits of Colbert-Leno-Letterman-Conan-Daily Show and laughed and laughed.

Later, I picked up my shoes from the doormat where I left them. Those leaves were still there, glued by, oh. Dog poop. Did the fellow mandala witnesses move off because? Humiliation. But.

Still. The. Best. Birthday. Ever. -30-

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