Sancochow

I can’t tell you how lucky I am to have such great friends and readers who have given me such nice birthday wishes through this blog, Facebook, Myspace, as well as through personal emails. Thank you! I also want to thank my beautiful wife who has truly shown me what unconditional love really is.

The night before my big day, I had fallen so hard on the floor - mostly on my left side. See, the thing is, when I’m home putzing around, I wear these chunky, platform flip flops because, well, I’m really short and I can’t reach things without them. While walking down the hallway into my bedroom to get dressed, I tripped over one of my flip flops and went tumbling down right onto my entire left side. Madelene was off that day and said all she saw were two feet lying horizontally outside of the door’s dwelling, and two flip flops flung off lying in different directions. This was the first time since I was a little kid that I cried over a slip and fall. It hurt that bad. I thought I had broken my leg, but luckily I didn’t.

Weird thing about this was, while crying over the pain, I started realizing that the pain was subsiding a little, but I was still crying. I must have sat on the floor for twenty minutes crying over other things besides the pain. It somehow must have released some sort of emotional box way deep down inside that tripped and fell open.

The rest of the day was fine. I was ok, but had some swelling on my entire left leg as well as my hip. (Big sign of aging right there!) When February 4th arrived, my birthday, I woke up to intense jabs of pain on my left side. I was laid up the entire day crying over the pain as well as emotional junk and, well, turning 35 and all. It was such a horrible combination, which made for a somber birthday. I had to take some pain killers and slept most of the day. But it wasn't all that bad! Madelene made me a wonderful breakfast, spent time with me and then picked up dinner from my favorite restaurant along with my favorite type of cake + ice cream to boot. (This will definitely cushion my wounded hip.) She even put candles on it and sang happy birthday. She knew I was a bit down and totally cheered me up, drew me a bubble bath with Epson salt, (another red flag of aging), lit up some scented candles, put on some soothing music and let me soak until I got all sancochow. (Soggy.)

So thanks to all my friends and readers who have cheered me up with your birthday wishes... And thank you, Madelene for making my life so wonderful!  I love you.

Now here's what my day looked like, and the finale is Madelene trying out for American Idol.