Milemarker 70

I’ve reached that 70 milestone, friends. Impossible to imagine that I’m actually that old.

Apparently Miriam Makeba was born on this day too, so I’m in good company. Of course also on this day in 1980, Robert Mugabe took power in Zimbabwe, so I guess we’ll just have to take the rough with the smooth.

And when I lived in Edinburgh, I had no idea that the future King Edward VII opened the Forth Bridge in 1890 on March 4th. I wonder if they planned that.

photoeverywhere.co.uk

The Net also tells me that I have lived for 36,816,480 minutes and I am 25,567 days old, 8,522 of which I have slept through. No comment is necessary on any of that.

I wish you could taste this cake. That’s not buttercream, which I really don’t like. It’s some kind of flavored cream or cream cheese. Utter heaven. My freezer is now full of what little remains. I want to make it last for at least the coming year.

The cake was presented at a surprise party my drum-and-dance peeps threw for me. My life almost ended with a heart attack at minute number 36,800,03. I’m not kidding.

Before, I never could understand the appeal of surprise parties. That was probably because I had never had one thrown for me nor had I ever attended one. I hear some people don’t like being caught off guard like that. Not me. I found it incredibly hilarious and touching that these crazy wonderful people had been plotting this event for weeks, even in my presence, and they were so slick about it I never had the slightest inkling.

The woman in front at the right with her hand up is a marvelous novelist and playwright and she stepped into the acting gig like Emma Thompson has nothing on her. She completely foxed me with a phony reason to meet downtown, I forgot the commitment, I was at home in my pajamas when the phone rang, I threw on clothes, and I dashed through traffic, found a parking spot blocks away, and showed up late. Didn’t even put my hair up. Made all my peeps wait, in suspense, for my grand entrance.

I almost fell over when this huge crowd blasted “Surprise!!!!” My drum teacher hugged me with a glass of beer in his hand and I was so overwrought, I somehow managed to throw the glass on the floor and it burst into a million pieces.

Look what my peeps made for me. You can see, everyone’s wearing one. “Dundun fola,” in the Mande languages, means “person who speaks through the drum.”

Even my teacher’s baby could join in the fun.

Barney doesn’t care. He is clearly starving and pathetic. I never feed him, you see.

And just look at what Miss Chloe made for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m still gobsmacked. I never dreamed that 70 could feel so great.