Birthday

Yesterday I turned four-oh. A little hard to believe, but I'm trying not to dwell on the number. I have whole theories on the deceptive, seductive nature of numbers anyway. What is important is that it was my special day. Go me. And thank you to everyone who left happy birthday wishes on my Facebook wall.

Last year was lots of fun, with a bunch of people coming over for cake (mmmm, cake). But as they say, you can't step in the same river twice, especially when that river has relocated to a new city where you don't know anyone yet. I considered bringing cupcakes to the scripture study class that meets Tuesday mornings, but didn't get around to it. It wasn't that it's such a second-grade thing to do. Mostly, I didn't want to call that much attention to myself this early in the game, and besides, I was out of cupcake papers.

While one might think it would look bleak, thanks to a certain sweet husband, the birthday did not suffer. I was sitting in the aforementioned scripture study class (sans cupcakes) when my cell phone rang. It was a local spa telling me that my husband had arranged a massage for me and when would I like to make the appointment? Woohoo.

Then we went out for dinner. Since we're less than an hour from Tulsa, our dinner options have greatly expanded. Uchenna's parents are visiting for a little while, so the three of us picked up Uchenna early from work and headed into town. There's a quaint little shopping/dinning place right downtown (surrounded by huge bank and hospital buildings) called Utica Square. We'd heard it advertised, so we figured this was a chance to explore the city a little.

We ventured out and did eventually find it, though we ended up seeing more of Tulsa than we'd intended. Our GPS got a little mixed up. They're not infallible, it turns out (in fact, our GPS thinks we live in the middle of an open field. We put in our "current position" as "home" and it shows a little house surrounded by a lot of nothing. Once we reach the last acknowledged intersection, the voice instructs us to "navigate off-road"). So we had to be creative with our instructions to the GPS, ask a passing pedestrian, and go up and down Utica Ave a couple of times.

After all that adventure, we decided to mix in a little of the familiar and chose PF Chang's (mmm, lettuce wraps). That's always a lively place, and besides, with four of us, it was very festive. So it was a very lovely birthday all around.