Birthday season. All this festivity and other inessentials. The dinner they made, the cake, too, which I have sliced and frozen that way because the thing is dense and toxically rich. The other homemade cake we ate right through. And how about driving to Okanagon, which to me seemed perfectly reasonable, even predictable? But the border guard there between Oroville and Osoyoos was like,

Let me get this straight. (pause) You drove—what?—six, seven hours to get here from Seattle (pause) to ride from down there (pointing 4 miles to Oroville) to Osoyoos (pointing the other way) (pause) And then you’re going to drive—what?—six, seven hours back to Seattle (pause) tonight (emphasis with a grimace)?

Yes. (smiling)

He was just having a hard time believing our story, he said. I suppose it might’ve been odd, considering we were dressed for the Tour de France but only riding seventeen miles. But how do you say, You see the thing about us is our personality types are opposites, but we’re hedonistically, whimsically identical. We do this kind of thing all the time.

Why... there was last year’s solstice and this year’s. Fourth of July, which we’re about to repeat. Bend and back. Mt. Rainier. Oh, and that long, long night of trepidation.

...

What was crazy was getting back at 3+ a.m. and getting up later that morning to a new project, poorly defined and rushed. Then another birthday event: the free baseball game at the new(ish) stadium. Woo!

Pam got free tickets from her UPS man. So we met up and took the bus down to the game. We climbed the steps to the stadium and it was like, Wow! A real baseball field. I’ve admired that retro-industrial stadium for years. You know how the lid slides back over the train tracks and at night in the rain when lament pounds hard you drive by there and see the headlights of the Amtrak illuminating the girders and it looks as dark as you feel in the comic book window of that moment.... And it makes you want to go to a ballgame.

UPS man’s season seats are on the 3rd level, firstbase side. From there you can see the game sure, but you also get to watch the sun set before the city, which this night was perfect and blue and gold and the improbable green. We ate lots, and for once the game was interesting. I think maybe much of what I thought was boring about baseball was really due to the ill effects of the Kingdome. Also, I think my attention span is more robust now that I’m an adult. And maybe because I’m more athletic than I was as I kid, I better appreciate the talent of the players. I don’t know. Exactly. But it was fun. And free.

And later, I went home and worked crazy until three.

And woke up hating the project, the company that gave it to me, and now I have more work due on Tuesday and the birthday season wanes.

So what?

I think

She likes to think to herself it’s the picture of him that burns a hole in her pocket. The thought warms her in the gelid loneliness, in the dread of responsibility that sometimes hints.