A Very Late Entry About My Birthday. in Each Day

I have written about my problem with disappointing birthdays before. So when we started planning a trip to the Island with mom for the weekend of my birthday I was worried that I would find “my day” passing by with little fanfare for me. I hate how I sound around this subject. I always feel like I sound ungrateful, and I always feel like I’m not being honest enough about my expectations, because why else am I disappointed? I mean, yes, there has definitely been times where my friends failed me, but that, I think, is actually the minority, while my brain makes me think ItS aLl ThE tImE. So something I’ve been learning to do, starting with M, has been telling him the mortifying truth of my feelings, telling him that I know the reality of the situation, and as soon as I voice the terrifying thing, it magically dissipates.
So while we were planning the trip, the subject of my birthday came up, and I said the thing. I told them I was worried the day would go by with vacation activities and my birthday would be a side-note. They assured me that wouldn’t be the case (I didn’t believe them, because precedent), and they asked what would make the day. I said that I wanted to have lunch at a specific restaurant (the one we went to with The Odd Couple when we did this same trip), I wanted to swim, and I wanted a cake. Because we were travelling we had to find a place to buy one on the road, and that proved to be a trick, when the time came.

I had planned our hotels along the route to give us maximum flexibility for where to plan activities (or not) to accommodate mom’s age, M’s neuralgia, and my heat sensitivity, and damn, we couldn’t have been better travel companions. We all seemed to tap out around the same time. So we found ourselves up in the north on my birthday. Perfectly positioned for the lunch I wanted. Incidentally, there was a place I wanted to go - I’d heard about it a few years ago, and it was notable because of the connotations of its hilarious name (think “Dildo, Newfoundland”), but it was really north, and had we not had a few hours to kill before the restaurant opened, this never would have worked.

We drove out to the scenic look out (Passing someone who had put a line of pine trees with strategically placed burls and it literally looked like they’d lined their property with cocks and balls. Both M and mom missed this on the way north, but we stopped for pictures on the way south), waved at some people cruising around on a fishing boat, took some lovely pictures, and then kept driving. Let me tell you, I have never been so nervous to drive a road. Lilly had mentioned casually that this place had a reputation for pushing visitor’s cars off the cliffs (with the visitors inside), which clearly hadn’t happened, but once we got there it was very evident that if someone wanted to it was entirely feasible. There were very few guard rails, very tight turns, and very steep hills. Not to mention the sheer cliffs a mere meter from the road. And paving seemed to be optional. Dirt roads stopped and started randomly for the entire drive into the community. At one point I said that had M not been with me I wouldn’t have continued, he scoffed and told me he knew I could do it, and that seemed to bolster me for the rest of the (terrifying) drive.

The most hilarious part is that when we got to the sign announcing the town, there was a blue Pontiac Vibe parked directly in front of the sign, missing a tire, with its hub resting on the spare, and someone had smashed in the front windshield. M and I took pictures of the scene, and I joked about making a shirt with the image, because it was frankly hilarious and vaguely terrifying.

We got to the little town, we found the local beach, I wandered around the shore with M, both of us under umbrellas. I haven’t mentioned that the sun was actively trying to kill us the entire time. Even stopping to swim earlier in the trip didn’t save me from heat-stress. We took a bunch more pictures, and then headed back to the car. The drive back to not-terrifying roads landed us at the restaurant at about 11:45.
I ordered the crab dinner. It was so messy, and so involved, I barely spoke for the whole meal. Just digging into the crab, and enjoying every little morsel. I had been dreaming of that crab dinner since our visit 2 years ago, and it absolutely lived up to the hype in my head.

We were so full, we practically rolled out of the restaurant. It was too hot to go for a hike, but I had bookmarked a scenic waterfall that was about 50 meters from the parking lot. The drive to the parking lot was also arduous, but I was rewarded with a Red Tailed Hawk flying through the trees, practically right in front of the car. I yelled (which M always reacts poorly to), but M was looking down and he missed it.

We made it to the waterfall. We stomped around on the rocks a bit, both mom and I slipping and somehow not dying in the process. Two nice young women took a picture of the three of us with the falls in the background, and soon enough the bugs were threatening to carry us away. So we got back on the road.

We were supposed to do a famous hike that evening, but by 2pm we all knew it wasn’t going to happen. I fought being disappointed, but eventually I came up with a new plan for the evening.
We drove to the final stop, a small French fishing village, where there happened to be a rather famous bakery. We’d been unable to get a cake the day before, at a bakery I’d looked up and was excited about. The place we’d planned on stopping was closed despite its posted open hours.
This bakery we found didn’t have cake, but they did have a coconut cream pie, and I was genuinely happy with the choice (I’d also been happy with banana cream pie, but would have been settling for a lemon meringue).

We lugged our things into our place for the night, and rested for some time - I cannot over state how hot it was - and then cooked dinner (spaghetti). Since we weren’t going to go for the sunset hike, I forced everyone back in the car and we drove out to a lighthouse, which happened to share a property with a co-op pasture, so we drove alongside cows down a dirt road to get there. We took lots of pretty sunset pictures, and then headed to the beach.
Unfortunately the beach was a little messy for my tastes, and I get weird about seaweed. But I was determined to get salty, so I waited for an opportune moment, a good wave to clear out the area, and dove in and then immediately ran for shore. Even if it was only technically a swim, that was good enough for me.

We went back to our place, where the coconut cream pie was waiting. We put Crazy Stupid Love on for mom, and M and I went out to wander the wharf. I took a really beautiful picture of the boats at night, with the last pink haze of sunset in stark contrast to the black of cloud cover.

M and I managed to have sneaky sex, despite mom in the room beside us. In fact, we’d done it the night before, too, M said it was a nice book-end to celebrating my day.

It was genuinely one of the best birthdays I have had in what feels like a long time. I couldn’t let it go unrecorded.