I just watched Mama Mia, watched the joy of youth, the fun of middle age and the insanity that sometimes comes over us. It was a wreck of a day today, high winds, heaps of rain, dull, miserable and awful weather for my 69th birthday but I enjoyed every minute of it. I had Shirley my daughter and her husband and kids here over night so we had breakfast, what my grandson calls "BIG Breakfast", bacon, eggs, mushrooms, tomato, potatoes and baked beans, Christopher loves it and the others say "you shouldn't have" and eat it all up. We usually sit out on the verandah together after breakfast but because of the lashing rain stayed inside and played my gift "Just Dance 2016" on the Nintendo Wii and the grandkids, my daughter and I took turns with the two remotes and laughed at each others antics. It warmed us up and made us feel good.

I had some phone calls from friends including one from the man I work most closely with at church who sang to me, despite the fact that he doesn't sing, he just did it because i asked him to and he thought it was a good idea. I don't usually have a lot of phone calls so that was a great gift. I have a new man in my life, well sort of, as it is early days yet and he rang twice this morning and this afternoon. He was at home as he has a house in one of the Lake suburbs, on the edge of the Lake Road and they are expecting flooding with a combination of on shore winds and high tides so he was staying home to keep an eye on the situation there.

I have had a lot of birthdays in sad situations and it could have been the same this year only for the extra effort my daughter made to make it special. We went out to lunch and then on to the movies to see "Alice Through the Looking Glass". It was not really what I expected but even so I enjoyed it, a lot of action, a lot of Time jokes, a lot of tension but all at the level where it could be enjoyed by children as well as adults. I found it fascinating as it was somewhat the style of the Lewis Carroll original but a lot more Roald Dahl if you see what I mean. I have seen a lot of movies over the years with those two grandchildren and so we often recall those we have seen together. It is another way of bonding, to share experiences and I like that way of spending time with them.

Do I think about Ray on my birthday still? Yes I do. I think of some of my birthdays during our 44 years of marriage, the ones spent alone with the kids while he was out on patrol with Fisheries, the ones where we could go out with friends or be with family. There was the 10 and a half years when we lived away from the Coast and the friends we celebrated with were new friends, There were the times when his parents were still alive when we celebrated with his side of the family. The memories do not fade, the sadness is not with me all the time but it is still there in the background. It is sad that he cannot be here, that at the end of the day the family go on home and I am alone again.

But it has been a great week for me, I went out with my man on Monday, just a stroll around one of the local shopping centres and some lunch. I went out with a group of women on Tuesday,we are all late May early June birthdays and do this every couple of years. I had Wednesday morning at home and did my Strokenet hosting,but in the afternoon did some nursing home visits. I went into the local hospital on Thursday morning and visited a friend who is younger than me and has had a heart attack, scary really when I think he is so much fitter than me and yet this can happen. I had a church meeting in the afternoon to discuss the future of some of the groups i belong to. We are an ageing church and struggling to keep some of the programs operating well with the volunteers we have.

I helped with the church Coffee morning in the morning on Friday and then had lunch out with some of the girls from the Craft group. My daughter and family came late Friday afternoon and we had dinner together and a long chat before bed. It was a lovely way to end a day. And then we had a wonderful day today. Good company, good food and some fun and laughter. From tomorrow I go on with normal life, normal routines again but at least I had this week as a great week. A week with a lot of happenings that would have been impossible in my caregiver days so I am grateful for that. I can live a normal life, in fact I am living a normal life. I am not "over it" but I am getting over it. i can be independent and I can manage alone but when I go out I can still have fun.

And so to watching Mama Mia, with the rain still hammering on the roof, the wind still blowing and the temperature dropping. All those scenes of bright blue skies on a lovely Greek Island. It is a reminder that winter must be endured but summer will be here again, that there is joy in life in very unexpected ways, that there is hope in middle age and good things come to people who wait. And they come in unexpected forms. And there is a future for us all, a future based on what we dream but also what we plan. I am enthusiastic about some things in life and that helps to buoy me up when the going gets tough. And i enjoy the reminder of youth in movies, a youth that was filled with Abba songs and with dancing and laughing and being in love with life.

As I embark on my 70th year I want to be happy, to have fun and to enjoy life, and when I don't I want to have the courage to go through whatever else my life has in store for me.