Birthday Season

It's birthday season in the Double-Doctor house! Today Dear Husband's brother called to wish him a belated birthday and me a happy birthday. DH says he'll call back tomorrow, just in time to wish his brother "Feliz cumpleanos" himself. Meanwhile, my younger brother's natal day is at the end of the month. Gotta love July.

To celebrate, we carpooled with some friends to an "authentic" German restaurant, complete with stuffed hunting trophies on the walls and waitresses in dirndls. We enjoyed goulasch, sausages, schnitzels, asparagus, Spätzle, and potatoes every which way. And of course some Wein und Bier. A big favorite at the table was the Mettwurst, a paprika-spiced spreadable sausage. On top of all that, there was live accordion music, and when another couple needed a lesson on how to polka, DH and I got up and showed them how it's done!



Below is our birthday loot. So many sweet or funny cards. In the background are the cloth napkins my mother gifted us, "so [we] can be green together." She also got me the tshirt from Girl Scouts' "Ban Bossy" campaign. Whatever critiques I might make about Sheryl Sandberg's individual solutions to structural problems facing women, the campaign hits home for me, because I was labelled "bossy" while growing up. Some of that is attributable to being a know-it-all older sister, but some was surely also due to gendered perceptions of leadership. I am glad that Girl Scouts was there to help me grow into a confident and more thoughtful woman.

I asked DH to buy me the book, Beyond Bratwurst: A History of Food in Germany. When he teased me about having yet another book to read for my dissertation, I retorted that it's for my book. "Oh, well that's good," he replied, "because it's too late to read anything else for your dissertation!" Today I learned that "I" had bought him new organ shoes. Happy birthday to us!