A Sweet Start to Sixty!

A couple of really great things happened in the year 1964. In February, the Beatles came to America for the first time. In August, the film Mary Poppins was released. And on December 2, Lee and Norma Colyer welcomed a(nother) baby girl into their family. That little girl - born with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a china doll complexion - well, that was ME!!! :-)

So it was that I celebrated my 60th birthday on this day. I told my husband three weeks ago that I wanted my birthday lunch from Olive Garden. I am partial to their fettuccine, and I had a hankering for some. They also still do that $6 take-along deal, as well as offering a free dessert on your birthday. Sign me up! I'm in!

My husband treated me to my birthday meal, and everything was good. I enjoyed salad with Italian dressing, bread sticks (which arrived quite late, with many apologies), a lunch portion of fettuccine, and a few bites of my husband's pasta e fagioli. He ordered the spaghetti with meatballs.

At the end of the meal, I got a take-along serving of fettuccine for tomorrow that is actually BIGGER than the lunch portion I ate in the restaurant. I also claimed my birthday bonus, but got it to go: a free slice of Sicilian cheesecake. The menu indicates it is ricotta cheesecake with a shortbread cookie crust, topped with strawberry sauce.

Hours later, my husband and I were watching a movie. I picked Wild Wild West, a 1999 American steampunk western, for something humorous and fun and silly. And suddenly, it was time for cheesecake! I opened the box to discover a very nice slice of cheesecake and a small container of strawberry sauce, neatly packaged so it wouldn't spill and get sticky.

I put the slice of cheesecake on a plate and drizzled the strawberry sauce all over it. It looked spectacular, as you can see. Let me tell you what: IT TASTED EVEN BETTER!!! My husband and I give it a full 10 on the dessert scale. If you like cheesecake, you will LOVE this. 

I do not exaggerate: we were moaning, it was so good. And after we were done, I licked the strawberry sauce off the plate. "I'm so happy I could cry," my husband offered. He said it gets the "Aunt Nell" (the best baker in his dad's family) seal of approval.

So here is a photo of the birthday cheesecake. I turned 60 on this day.* I had a great meal, and I have lots more for later. I enjoyed a beautiful and delicious slice of cheesecake, in the company of the one that I love best. I watched a fun movie. I had a good day.

Now for a soundtrack song . . . well, at the end of the film Wild Wild West, they give us a marvelous video of one of the songs from the film. I love the song and I think the video is happy and fun. It feels like a song for a celebration. It makes ME want to dance. So here is Enrique Iglesias, with Bailamos.

*I also missed my parents big-time, but I tried not to let that feeling overwhelm me. One of my favorite things used to be my parents calling me on my birthday and hollering Happy Birthday into the phone at me. My dad always seemed to be convinced that in order to get his voice through the long distance of a phone call, he had to SHOUT. It's hard work sometimes, turning your sorrows into gratitude, but it's well worth the effort. So instead of being sad about it all, I tried to wrap myself in the happy memory of him hollering at me: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DOLL BABY!!!!"  And so it is that my birthday finds me shouting back: "No restrictions, Dad! NO RESTRICTIONS!"

Special music note: I also was fortunate enough to discover this wonderful group of siblings online today who sing in gorgeous three-part harmony. They are called Lifein3D. Here they are:
The Sound of Silence
Unchained Melody
Hallelujah

And so it is that this birthday posting ends with a hallelujah. As it should!