Birthdays

Today is The Wife's birthday. I'd reveal her age in this space, but I prefer to continue walking the World of the Living for a while longer, and while I do so, I further prefer that my ass remain both attached to my body and devoid of scar tissue from lots of kicking, so we'll leave the number out of it, OK?

Anyway, we're off to have dinner with The Parents in a short while. For gifts, I presented The Wife with a pair of earrings made of peridot (Little Quinn's birthstone), as well as this DVD set, which just may be the greatest DVD set ever (and that's coming from a guy who views the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings Extended Edition DVD sets as cultural artifacts of the highest magnitude). You'd better bet I'll be getting Volumes Two and Three in the future!

The major gift was an afghan throw blanket. We already have quite a few of these, but apparently it's now possible to have a throw blanket woven with a photographic image of one's choosing. The photo I used is this one. Little Quinn always had the warmest body -- that kid radiated heat once we got him home, which is strange since he had to be under a warmer for weeks after his birth -- so now, in a way, he'll always be able to keep his Mommy warm.

This isn't really a "happy" birthday, especially since the day after her birthday marks the halfway point between Little Quinn's birthday of August 26, and three days after that marks the third month of his death. But we can still strive for "bittersweet" over "just plain sad".

(By the way, The Wife has created a webpage on the CaringBridge site as a memorial to Little Quinn; you can see her efforts here. This is her effort entirely; I'm not posting anything there. CaringBridge is a site where people can create online tributes to loved ones who have died. One interesting thing is that CaringBridge's sites are not indexed in search engines, and there is no search function on the main CaringBridge site, so one can't just "surf" around the tribute pages. That's a neat way of maintaining privacy. I realize that, by posting this here, I'm kind of giving up the game in that regard, so I hope anyone visiting Little Quinn's memorial there will behave accordingly.)