Crucianize

Tag: birthday

  • Another Year Wiser: Reflecting on My 36th Birthday and the Gifts that Made it Special.

    Another Year Wiser: Reflecting on My 36th Birthday and the Gifts that Made it Special.

    Every year I get to experience another birthday I am awed at the fact that at 16 I never expected to live to see 20 and here I am 36, a wife and a mother. I never really take notice or consider it but I am highly blessed and fortunate to have made it out of those dark days and experienced so many things that seem fantastical.

    My birthdays are never really good days for me, I’ve spent so many years depressed and feeling ignored on a day others are celebrated. I don’t always get a cake or gifts, but if I get birthday greetings it always feels like an obligation, if people didn’t know my birthday they absolutely wouldn’t go out of their way to say Happy Birthday, I just wanted to feel special, for someone to be happy that on this day I was born. It seems egotistical but who doesn’t want to feel like they matter?

    I could write for hours about the birthdays I felt like the dirt on the floor but I want to talk about this one, this birthday that I felt so happy for the first time in a very long time.

    What made this birthday so different?

    Well, I got to talk to my mother, I know you probably don’t understand why this has such an impact on me but my mother is my everything, and living in different countries with a time zone difference means that we don’t always get to talk, sometimes several months pass before I hear from her and it wasn’t like I could call her, she was always busy, didn’t have a smartphone just a basic flip phone and I didn’t have a long-distance calling phone plan. So just the fact that I got to talk to her on my birthday made me very happy.

    I was expecting to stay home and do nothing, you know the same thing we did every year since I don’t even remember but my husband asked if I wanted to go out and I said yes, so we went out as a family for my birthday. We went to a restaurant I’d never been to before and I had a meal I’d never had before, it was nice all I really ever want is to do things as a family and have good memories. I know it’s directly related to how I grew up, we didn’t really do things as a family and I want different for my children.

    Here’s my birthday meal, a beef tataki, I also had a mojito, I was feeling adventurous knowing that I would be drunk before I even finished that one glass.

    I took some pictures of the children but none of me, not at the dinner anyway, I came home in such a good mood, this had already been one of the best days I’ve had for the year but it was about to get even better.

    My husband gave me my birthday present, a bottle of my favorite perfume. L’Interdit Rouge by Givenchy, I was lucky to receive samples before and fell in love with the scent but as you guys know those perfumes are not cheap and I just kept finding reasons why I didn’t have the funds to buy it even though I loved it. I even told my husband he could buy the cheapest smallest bottle and I would be fine with it but he got me a 50ml bottle and it means so much to me. It’s not so much the perfume but the thought behind it, the knowledge that he could have gotten the cheapest option but he got me a bigger bottle because he knew I loved it. I immediately pushed aside my Alien Goddess Intense perfume that I wore every day to put my L’Interdit Rouge at the very front of my shelf so it would be the first perfume I reach for and the first anyone would see.

  • The reasons why February was a rough month for me

    February…

    Usually, I spend February celebrating my birthday and when I was back home in St. Croix going to the Agricultural & Food Fair, I have not found anything over here that can be an annual birthday event. I spend my birthday either taking my son to school or staying home with him and doing nothing. I wish there were things for us to do but if it requires us interacting with others I don’t find that a suitable birthday enjoyment. If I’m lucky I go to a movie with my husband but we haven’t done that in a while.

    This year was my 32nd birthday and honestly, I was numb during the whole thing. I didn’t get a video call from my family, I didn’t get to go out, and my son fractured his elbow two nights before and we spent all night and the next day going from hospital to the next to get his elbow attended to. I was wiped out and would have been fine to stay home and do nothing but we went to the movies and I did enjoy it even though it was in French and I understood less than half of what was going on.

    I want more out of my 32nd year but I am stuck in figuring out just what I want.

    I picked back up my crocheting and successfully completed some small projects while continuing to work on a scarf I decided to make.

    My scarf in progress:

    Snickers keeping me company while I work on my rows.

    I am almost finished with a little teddy bear I am making, it just needs to be stuffed and have the final touches done:

    Now for my completed works, I recently picked up a French Knitter, a French Knitter is also known as Spool Knitting, Corking, or Tomboy Knitting. It’s a form of knitting that uses a spool with a number of nails around the rim to produce a narrow tube of fabric, similar to i-cord. The spools usually have four or five nails mine had four bendy things lol, here’s a picture so you can see what I am referring to:

    If you look closely in the background you can see the frustratingly difficult instructions I was supposed to follow to create a mouse. I was close to pulling my hair out when I looked on Youtube for a video to help me understand those impossible-to-decipher depictions. I was successful in following along with the video and made my first mouse. It was supposed to be for Snickers but…

    It was way too cute! I also didn’t want her swallowing the eyes if she got too rough with the little thing. I decided to crochet her a mouse that she can be rough with and set out to find a good pattern.

    I made her this:

    It honestly looks more like a Rat than a mouse but meh she likes those kinds of critters. I made some embellishments on the pattern so my Rat is special lol. Hopefully, Snickers likes her Rat friend and I can move onto finishing my scarf and another project I started (Mesh Hat).

    Before I forget, Naveen only had to wear his cast for three weeks, initially, they said four weeks but his elbow healed really fast and well, and last week Friday he got it removed.

    Until next time!