I struggled to decide what to write about this week. It’s Father’s Day, so I’ll be meeting my dad for breakfast at Denny’s before he heads to church. After that, we won’t be talking about Father’s Day since Corinne and I are working through our first Father’s Day without Dennis. She just doesn’t even want to think about it, let alone go out to a restaurant where other kids will be celebrating with their dads.

It’s also my birthday this week, and it’s been 19 years since I spent a birthday without my husband. My “rule” on my birthday since I got married has been that I won’t cook or clean. My birthday (much like Mother’s Day) is a day off. Since Dennis was not much of a cook, that meant we were eating out and I was not doing dishes or laundry. His joke was always that I’d better get the dishes and laundry done the day before. 🤨

Dennis was great about making these special days fun. He would give us a list of things he wanted for Father’s Day (and one of them was always a new bike 🙄), and we made sure there was something special that hadn’t been on this list, usually from his beloved Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Sometimes he would ask me to bake a cake, sometimes we would pick up dinner, and sometimes he would ask me to cook something specific, but it was always a good day for him, even through chemo. We wanted to make sure he felt like the great dad that he was because, as parents, we never feel like we’re good enough.

For my birthday, he inevitably went overboard. I told him every year that I didn’t need anything. I just wanted a day off (see the “rule” referenced above). But he said he couldn’t not get a gift for me, and he usually picked something expensive that I would never buy for myself. (As Corinne got older, she was good at convincing him that he didn’t need to spend as much as he wanted to.) I never got a homemade cake unless I baked it myself, but birthdays were always special with Dennis.

I don’t know what we’ll do for my birthday this week. I know I’m hitting Denny’s this morning with Dad for breakfast, and then Corinne and I are going to spend the afternoon at Shedd Aquarium. Maybe I’ll run by Denny’s on my actual birthday to order from the 55+ menu just because I can. Maybe we’ll go to Longhorn Steakhouse for the free dessert they e-mailed a coupon for. Maybe we’ll just chill and watch the iCarly reboot on Paramount+.

No matter what we do, this week will be challenging. It’s been a tough year since Dennis’s last Father’s Day, which we had no idea would literally be his last Father’s Day. My birthday is generally just another day for me, but it will definitely be more somber this year.

Hold tight to the people you love. You never know when you’ll have to let them go.

Happy Heavenly Father’s Day, honey, and Happy Father’s Day to my dad (and every dad). You are special, and you are loved. 💜💝

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for The Birthday Girl by Sue Fortin

417 pages
Publisher: One More Chapter
Publication Date: November 30, 2017

Publisher’s Description

Dear Carys, Zoe and Andrea
Come and join me for my fortieth birthday adventure weekend, full of mysteries and surprises
the like of which you can’t imagine.

When Joanne’s friends reluctantly accept an invitation to her birthday party, it quickly becomes clear that there is more to this weekend than they are expecting.
One of them is hiding a secret.
And Joanne is planning to reveal it…

A weekend away in a cottage in the woods sounds like fun—until no one can hear your cries for help.

Four friends.
A party to die for.
Who will survive?

************

Kept me guessing until the end!

I thought I had this one figured out about halfway through, but it turns out there are so many villains in this story that I couldn’t have guessed it. The story is mostly from the point of view of Carys Montgomery, who joins her friends for a weekend to celebrate two of their birthdays. Three of them had been kind of on the outs with the one who planned the birthday getaway, and it’s clear once their adventure starts that the celebration is not what they anticipated.

I won’t give anything away. This is a well-written story with interesting characters. A couple point of view changes caught me off guard and probably could have been worked around, but overall a great read. I’ve read three books by Sue Fortin, and I will continue to seek them out.

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