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My Captain turned 47 today.

Was that a secret?  Did he not want me to share that?  I wonder if men are like women, trying to ignore the aging process?

Welp, too late.  Cat’s out of the bag.  You have to expect that when you marry an open book like me.  But I’m no short story, I’m like a big honking tome of War and Peace, gaping open in a shop window on a crazy busy street, in the spotlight, under a microscope.  And maybe under a disco ball.  With a neon sign flashing.

That’s what he married.

Do you pity him?  Don’t.  I’m a colorful book, entertaining to read.  So he’s got that going for him.

He was working at the firestation for 24 hours today (48 straight, if he gets hired on overtime tomorrow) and so I called his shift….Joe…we love Joe…a few days ahead and said, “Let’s do something!”

So Joe and Brett and Tom and the shift put together a wonderful dinner with cake and fun and love, and opened their table up to me and the kids as well.

It’s no small thing to be invited into the inner sanction of a fireshift.  They are tight.  They have a deep knowledge and trust of each other born of getting through countless high stress, life-or-death situations together.  And if you aren’t with them for all of that, well, you tend to remain on the outside.

I might have a slight step or two in farther than other non-shift people from my days volunteering as a medic, but I’m still on the outside.  No doubt about that.

So it’s with huge amounts of gratitude that my kids and I joined them during My Captain’s birthday dinner with the shift.

We brought home-made birthday cards and candles for the Boston Cream Cake the shift had bought.  Other than that, the shift did everything.

There is nothing as special as being validated by the people in your life.  I don’t care how old you are.

And there is nothing more beautiful than watching someone you love with all of your heart bask in that validation.

Validation with a side of Boston Creme Cake.  Does it get any better?  I think not.

I am trying to teach my kids to be low maintenance.  Mostly because every high-maintenance person I know is either 1) unhappy or 2) bent on making other people unhappy.  So if something isn’t ‘ just so’ or ‘exactly perfect‘ or ‘what we expected,’ I try to make a point of shrugging it off, so my kids can learn from my modeling.

So Varmint and Critter and I are in a restaurant called The Frog House for breakfast this morning, when the waitress puts a plate of Eggs Benedict in front of me.  I love Eggs Benedict…but only when the eggs are poached mostly hard.  A little bit of egg yolk is like gravy, a lot of it is the precursor to retching for me.  This dish….this dish was so raw the protein string was clearly visible.  You know the protein string?  The little pre-chick umbilical cord?  That little clear and white bit of …

…ugh…I am ready to puke just writing about it.

So there I am, faced with certain dry heaves, and my kids are watching my every move.

I poked holes in the yolks, let the raw, runny, goop run onto the plate, scooted my Benedict out of its path and did my best to act like nothing was wrong.

I could feel Varmint’s eyes on me.  On my plate.  I waited for the comment.  I took a bite, followed it quickly with hot coffee and thought of balloons and puppy kisses and yellow daisies.

It was the yellow daisy thought that did it.  Ever noticed that those are the same color as raw egg yolk?  Trust me. Exact color and hue.  I couldn’t eat much more.

Look, the good news is that the fact that I didn’t snarf down a meal as per usual escaped the watchful eyes of my munchkins, and I didn’t embarrass myself with public vomiting.

But the question I find myself asking is this: Since I WANTED to send it back, and I probably would have had my kids not been present, does that mean I really AM high maintenance?  My Captain would have eaten it, even if it had eggshell and rat turds in it.  He’s that low maintenance….he’s a firefighter.  He’s had to be.

I’m having a really hard time with this.  I can’t re-define myself at this late stage in the game.

And you can be darn sure My Captain has no desire to be married to that, either!

Varmint and Critter and I came down to Bethany Beach, Delaware for the weekend.  It was hot on the beach today…very hot.  And the flies….the flies!  THE FLIES!

They were all over me.  They were all over the kids.  They were swarming…swarming, I tell you!  The kids ran desperately to the water; I slouched miserably in my beach chair, futilely swatting at the hordes of insects trying to suck the life out of me.   There were so many of them they could have carried me away.  It was like they were the Dingos of Bethany, and I their helpless, but very juicy and tasty victim.

I had half a bottle of Bullfrog Sunscreen and Bug Repellant, and doused myself liberally.  They didn’t care; I may as well have basted myself.  They laughed, and still swarmed me; but they didn’t bite.  They just sat on me, eyeing me like I’ve often eyed McDonald’s Sausage Burritos.   Like they knew how delicious I was.  Like I was soon to be in their belly.  Like it wasn’t IF, but rather WHEN it was going to happen.

Chilling, isn’t it?

I began to wonder why the heck I was sitting there instead of safe on the ol’ glider back on the porch of Pop-Pop’s beach cottage.

And then I saw the kids playing in the water.  The most perfect word for it is “Frolicking.”  They were frolicking.  Add To and Fro, and you’ve got the exact picture.  My Varmint and Critter were “Frolicking To and Fro” in the water.

Critter has got the sniffles, and I wasn’t sure this morning that we should come to the beach at all.  But looking at him now, with the warm sand, the sunshine, the salty sea air and water….it was exactly what he needed after a stressful first week of school.  It was exactly what we all needed.

Except for the Dingo flies.

They just plain sucked.

I thought I’d show you where we live.

I keep the kids in the attic upstairs, and My Captain and I have the lower levels.  Of course, the servants live in the basement.

Our front yard is kind of sparse, but the view isn’t too bad.

But….

….the neighbors can be nosy as hell.

OOoooooh, wait, this isn’t our home.  This is the Prince of Wales Lodge, in Waterton, Canada.  Silly me.  It’s so much like our cottage in Dickerson, Maryland, I was momentarily confused.  Forgive me.  I’m just so used to living like this, you see.

And by ‘I’m just so used to living like this,’ I mean I live nothing like this.

Except for the locking-the-kids-in-the-attic part and the servants-in-the-basement part, of course.

…and in unrelated news, a Varmint sighting occurred earlier this afternoon.  Even though it was well camouflaged in an English Floral Blouse on an English Rose upholstered Chair, observers were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the elusive creature while it was eating an Asian Pear.

This is particularly interesting because you don’t see many Varmints in the wild anymore.  It is believed Marlin Perkins died before achieving such a feat.

Live, from Dickerson, Maryland, this is Mamaboe, reporting.