One kid. One team. Two kittens.

[captainsblog]

I promised you schmoopy, schmoopy is what you get.

This was my first-ever birthday blog post to a then just-turning-fourteen year old:

Boogies d'feet
 
Strictly speaking, the subtitle of the birthday candle box (one gets this living so close to Canada) is "bougies de fête." But that's the term that pops into my head every year when we break out the box to celebrate this occasion.

Eleanor's working tomorrow night (and I may be, as well, depending on what news and commitments tomorrow brings), so we elected to move up the celebration to tonight. Just as I took the kid to get things media the other day, Mom took her to the mawl tonight for her annual allotment of the things girlê-girl. She seems happy with all of the above.

In a way, beginning the celebration tonight is fitting, for it was a few hours ago, on this day in 1992, that Eleanor came out of the bathtub, feeling more piqued than usual after a full workday (even taking calls from coworkers while en bain), and announced that she was, quite probably, in labor.

An hour or so later, we were at the now-deceased Genesee Hospital. Seven or so hours after that, she was at 10 centimeters but with an 11 centimeter head trying to work its way out.

At 6:15 that morning, a life popped out. After they cleaned her up and passed her to Mom and then me, I held her hands, I admired her face, and for possibly the last time in her life, I got her to shut up merely by holding and rocking her.

The birthdays since then have celebrated growth, creativity, togetherness, and above all, a love that always endures, no matter how much we can annoy each other ::raspberries her::

Happy birthday, Emily (in 4 hours and 40 minutes, anyway) ::hugs::

Six years later, as she turned 20 and was home from RIT, we took her Oop North to see an art exhibit, meet some still-beloved then-LJ friends of ours, and legally drink for the first time- and this entry showed up late that night; highlights included-

♫I know we don't live here anymore, we saw a good friend on the Danforth....♫

Not the exact lyrics, certainly not matching the band in the icon, but we're just bursting with all things Canadiana right now, so deal.  We celebrated the 20th anniversary of Emily's birth by entering our peace-loving neighbouring land to the north (well, west in our case), three days into the bicentennial year of them declaring war on us and eventually burning our city down.

Hey, no hard feelings, eh? Your roads are clear, your people eclectic and your parking meters take American quarters.

Buffalo dawned frigid and with a bit of snow as we worked out when we'd depart and where we'd go. By the time we got on the road, the snow had progressed into squalls, but within minutes of touching Royal soil, the snow stopped and the sun came out.

It's been years since any of us had been over, more than a decade since the three of us last went together, but oh how I love how subtly and wondrously things change within 45 km of your front door. Just a few ticks down the 405, you pass The Beer Store; how can you go wrong in a neighbourhood like that? Not long past, we went by a Don Cherry's Sports Grill I'd not seen before. (No link; the corporate site is pretty annoying, just like Grapes is;) Eleanor speculated that they probably have a pretty strict dress code; "sorry, sir, but we can't let you in; your sports jacket isn't loud enoof."  Then, somewhere around Missasaugua, we passed a van belonging to the Two Small Men With Big Hearts moving company; I don't know what it is about this industry that inspires such cleverness in naming, but these two certainly moved me far more than the Seven Santini Brothers ever did.

Once off the highways, we headed through Chinatown to get to the Art Gallery of Ontario for the Chagall exhibition. First, though, a Brinks truck decided to try making an exhibition out of the right front end of my car, cutting across two lanes of Spadina in front of us to make a left onto King Street. (What were we gonna do, get into a shootout with the guys in the back?) We happily survived that, I dropped the grrls outside the entrance and scored cheap on-street parking within a block.

...I'd met

la_rainette  and family a number of years ago, but today, Em and Eleanor got to, too, and it was a delightful repast. Cathy caffeinated us, plied us with all makes of sugar, and shared the company of mere, as well as Froglet and Tadpole (both of whom have grown amazingly since I last saw them) and some very reluctant-to-come-out cats. We literally herded cats, as they prepared to take them all to the vet for some routine shots, and we bid adieu to one of the nicest folks we've ever been blessed to meet in this place.

 

Her final blessing was recommending a restaurant nearby for Emily's birthday dinner- a wood-oven Italian place, in what must have once been a dress or shoe shop on Danforth Avenue, called il Fornello. Marvelous pizza and pasta, a melted-brownie SOMETHING in lieu of cake for the birthday girl, and her first official legal-outside-the-lower-48 drink. We talked on the way back about how responsible she is about such things; both of us grups retired on New Years Eve long before she came home from a night downtown here, and neither of us ever had a worry that she would have done anything, or even gotten in a position to do anything, that would have kept us up all night.  We done good 20 years ago in an equally cold-dawning Rochester morning, and it echoed just as done-good today:)

First one with a photo I can find, the first I got to write to our proud college graduate (shown slightly younger in the picture;):

The Day That Changed Everything.

Eleanor and I moved in together on January 1, 1987. We were married later that year, bought the condo we were living in a few months after that, and had closed on and moved into our first single-family home in the winter of 1991.

All important things, but things in the lives of two people. It was this day, 23 years ago, when the two became three.



That, literally, is the first picture in the book (unless you count the ultrasounds).  It came after an evening of labor, a middle-of-the-night decision to C-section, and a healthy mother and baby in the world together for the first time by a bit past 6 that morning.

A few months later, she was in day care, and by the time we left Rochester in her third year, she was a happy, well-adjusted little girl who was already showing signs of more artistic talent than I will ever aspire to. She got that from her mom; I contributed much of the verbal agility and all of the bad teeth:P

For years, today meant we were the first stop on the annual party circuit. We did zoo parties and art parties and at least one obligatory Chuckie Cheese party that still brings sugar-high nightmares.

Today, though, turning 23, she's in her new home, with the love of her life, and with two kitties of their own at their feet. We talked earlier; boring day at home. She has at least one new celebration, though: yesterday, her boss gave her an unexpected raise, mainly because of how well she handled a rather stressful situation, entirely on her own, on the last day of 2014.  I'm not sure she would have had all the pieces in place to do that even as of a few years ago, but it makes us proud as all get-out to see it in her.

She- they- will always have a place in our home and our lives, but that little girl has grown up. The dreams she follows will be her own, and in her own way.  It's a joy just to watch.

Wow. Got 11 comments on that back in early 2015. Remember when we did that?

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Also, remember when we all blogged? And I did every day, or close? Fun times.

I can't find any more recent panegyrics to the child, but they are just as deserved as ever.  She and her beloved have been together since high school, under the same roof since RIT days, and, for the past three years, that roof has been hundreds of miles away in a state we've never visited her in. She found work, and artistic expression, and more furbabies to love.  I have shared one brief moment with her since then in person, and 2020 made any planning for such things impossible then and into the foreseeable now. But we still share everything from film to show binges to politics to laughs.

How far she's come as she begins her third decade with us in a time that needs her creativity and kindness more than ever.

Happy birthday, Emily. We love you.

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Unblogged, but definitely remembered, was the year after her birth when, as this year, January 3rd fell on a Sunday. I also remember what we did for that one: we were at home, at a birthday party for her.

There may have been a radio on in the background. No television, because the game was blacked out, but it made the papers, back then-



and again, in a piece recounting the history of that game's most famed play-by-play call, just last weekend:

It was pandemonium. It was FANdemonium. It was... fantastic.

But Em and Da Bills go back almost as far as you can go. The Comeback Game was a year after her birth,  Buffalo's first playoff stop that year on the road to their third of four consecutive Super Bowl appearances. The year before, they also made the NFL post-season and had a second-round home game the Sunday after Emily's Friday morning birth. (Eleanor had delivered by C-section, and she was still recovering.) A cadre of Bills fans filled the other recent mommy's side of the semi-private room at Genesee Hospital, playing the game on their side of the room and cheering them on to their victory over the Chiefs.

Both of those runs ended with losses to NFC East teams. Dallas, who they faced in the Super Bowl after the comeback game, just finished their 2020 season with a losing record. The Washington Now No Names, meanwhile, who defeated Buffalo in the title game right after Emily was born, will also finish this season under .500. Amazingly, both still have a mathematical chance of winning the crappiest division in the NFL. Meanwhile, the Bills blew out Miami today playing mostly backups, and in doing so secured the second-best playoff spot in their conference, and also marched their all-time best record of 13-3 from the year before Emily's birth. Miami also amazingly has a very good chance of still getting in despite the loss; sadly, there's only one scenario that will return them to Orchard Park and a stadium with a few actual fans next weekend.

She's a good luck charm for them when they play on their birthday, I guess:)

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I ran some errands during the game today, and came home to find Eleanor in tears from a kind gesture:



Mystery author Clea Simon goes back to high school days with me. We never quite lost touch, but renewed friendship through Face-ial connections, I met up with her and her husband on a New England visit a few years back, and she was one of numerous friends to console us on the loss of Boz last month.  But today brought this gift from her.  If this doesn't get the waterworks going for me, nothing is likely to.

The kitty on the cover looks more like Bronzini, who's still very much with us. He's becoming more of a constant presence, cuddling and snoozing in all manner of adorable poses.  Eleanor has noticed that he has stripes way down in his coat. We're still not sure if the two of them had the same daddy, but they will always share a bond with each other, and through that with each of us.

Boz's box will come home soon, and will go in the garden with all of our Rainbow Bridge travelers and the one of Emily and Cam's who sadly joined them there a few years ago. All of us humans will always be grateful to the moments they connected with us, and each other through them.

Meow. Thank you. Go Bills. Happy Birthday.