I’m trying to be mindful of Delights in 2024, believing that Ross Gay’s Book of Delights held value beyond its pages. We should delight in birthdays more. Without them, we wouldn’t exist. Existing should be the first and foremost Delight.
Baby turned one on Sunday.
I started celebrating birthdays for pets when I was in elementary school. Elsa, our Norwegian elkhound, shared a birthday with my mom (poor Mom, never even having her birthday to herself). I spent my allowance on a stuffed toy and wrapped it for Elsa’s birthday (she received a present first for Christmas and it snowballed from there). When I was in my thirties, I found a birthday card I had sent Elsa while I was in college. I apparently had sent a present as I had written in the card Hope you like the bunny! Glad she couldn’t read or else my card would have ruined the wrapped surprise.
Fast forward to 2000, when Ginger, my Pomeranian, celebrated her first birthday. Not only did she receive a present, but a vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting (she only licked a bit of the frosting). That followed her favorite supper—goulash. That little dog danced for goulash every time I made it, so I could only assume that goulash was her favorite food.
Now it’s 2024, Baby’s first birthday. Baby is half Newfoundland, half Great Pyrenees, now bigger than that miniature pony on the Amazon commercial with the doggie door. I named her Baby because I call all furry creatures Babies, as the squirrels in my backyard are called. I also thought it would be ironic, with her size and all. And then there’s the Dirty Dancing reference. She doesn’t sit in corners much, so I haven’t been able to utter the line that Patrick Swayze found ridiculously cheesy.
I bought a stuffed llama for Baby since she loves commercials with llamas. Maybe she thinks she is a llama. I also wrapped up a pink rubber dog; it came packaged as a pair and she had already destroyed the purple one. We debated her favorite meal: she loves Chinese, Italian, but we went with beef and noodles, since she had stolen the leftover roast from the counter a couple of months ago. I made vanilla cupcakes with my homemade cream cheese frosting, which she loves licking from the spoon.
But if her birthday had been a human birthday, it would have sucked.
The morning started off with the usual: a coffee and donut ride with a Pup Cup for Baby. But then Baby’s day derailed.
My husband has a program that turns my videos into shorts—he so kindly does that for me. But he waits until the last minute to create shorts of my Book Smart episodes, so he sat on the couch for an hour, making Baby’s morning walk about two hours late. She pouted as she waited. Then her noon walk was replaced with my son’s departure back to college. (I am a fair-weather walker; I told my husband if he started walking Baby three times a day, she would expect three walks a day, no matter the weather. When she doesn’t receive all three walks, we can expect pouting and derisive sighs.) Pouting and derisive sighs ensued all afternoon.
While the roast cooked in the oven, we had other calamities occur: my laptop, the one I am currently typing on, will no longer hold a charge. I rarely use my phone (I probably use it collectively three hours a week total), but I cannot live without my laptop. It’s where I type, where I research, and where I play my music. I whined and complained. I hate new electronics, preferring to use whatever I have until it dies. I do not care about having the latest or greatest device. I don’t want to relearn my shortcuts or what have you. Plus, the last way I wanted to start my new year was an unplanned expense. Why are laptops still so expensive? Shouldn’t they be just a couple hundred dollars by now (and why are smaller ones more expensive than bigger ones? Where’s the logic in that?) All of this was unwinding prior to Baby’s birthday supper. Although it seemed like the world was ending, it is now Friday and I’m still typing away on a computer I fear will die for good despite a power source.
Then the weather gods turned our Winter Storm Watch into a Winter Storm Warning. As I grumbled, my husband turned to Baby and said, “You’re going to get snow for your birthday!” We hate snow, preferring beaches and sun to backyards of white cold snow. But Baby loves snow. She rolls around in it, tosses it up with her nose, and gallops through drifts like a Clydesdale. We’ve thought of putting bells on her and latching a sled to her. With the oncoming storm, Baby went on an impromptu evening ride. She enjoys these surprise jaunts to the landfill or for ice cream or when we drove around to look at Christmas lights. She stopped at Ace for propane, where some ignorant man reached through the car window to pet her. As much as I squeal over dogs (more so for cats), I wouldn’t pet a strange dog in a car. She loves people but is fiercely protective, assuming big men carrying propane tanks (or Kleenex boxes) are threats to her humans. Yet the ride replaced her walk. On her birthday of all days, Baby only received one walk.
Baby devoured her beef and noodles and would eat the leftovers for two more days. However, she did not even lick the frosting from her cupcake. Although I didn’t say it aloud, I would have made triple chocolate cupcakes had I known she wouldn’t eat them. I shouldn’t nitpick her unpredictable eating though; as a picky eater myself, I’ve driven everyone around me crazy with my food eccentricities. Monday she would eat the cupcake, drooling on our legs as we ate them, slurping the last bite as the frosting stuck to the roof of her mouth.
Her favorite part of birthdays: presents. The day before when I wrapped them, I used up the bit of birthday paper I had left, so Baby pranced around with the long cardboard roll in her mouth, ripping it to shreds in my library (which used to be the dining room). Yet she still will not rip open her wrapped presents. While I was wrapping Christmas presents, she butted her nose into my office, stealing the wrapping paper rolls. When she ran out of those, she started picking up the random pieces of paper—I told her no, she could only have the rolls. I wonder if that is why she won’t open her presents. She’s oddly smart and overly sensitive. Even when we open up an end of her present so she can see what’s inside, she dances around and bats the present on the floor until we reveal unwrap it for her. Ginger loved ripping open her presents; so did Elsa. Maybe Baby will grow into it.
The llama lasted all of two minutes before the living room floor looked like a Build-a-Bear workshop had exploded, with piles of white stuffing reaching every corner. Baby’s Miss America platform is to rid the world of all squeakers, so within minutes she was chomping on the squeaker like a piece of gum, then spitting out the pieces for us to step on, resulting in a foul word as the pointy plastic impaled our feet. The rubber dog didn’t make it long before my husband took it away. Baby likes to swallow the rubber toys as she dismembers them: first a foot, then an ear, and finally the nose turned the pink dog into a victim of Hannibal Lector.
Baby bounced on the couch and wrestled with my husband during our customary TV time. Then she plopped on the floor in front of the window, sprawled out, legs high against the wall, snoring away.
Her birthday must have been a Delight after all.