It's begun! My Eighteenth annual Birth Week. I didn't even realize I had been doing it that long! The year after next will be the 20th year of this. Holy shit. (Side note: I do include 2003 as the first year in that Flickr "Birth Week" collection on Flickr, but I only did stuff a few days that year; I did not call it my "Birth Week," and make it a point to do something fun each day of the week, until 2004, so I mark 2004 as the first year of it. And 2005 was the first year I started taking the entire week off of work, which means 2004 and 2020 are the only years in which I did not take a weeklong vacation.)

This year, I kicked it off with Gabriel, who is now one of only two people who has been a part of it from the very start and with no breaks—indeed, as of this morning, since the rest of my 2021 Birth Week hasn't happened yet, he's the only one with eighteen separate dedicated Birth Week photo albums. (The only other participant with no years missing is Danielle; if she were alive, Auntie Rose would be the third.)

And, starting this year with Gabriel was a very deliberate choice, because even though I am vaccinated, and so are Gabriel and Lea—Tess, who is 13 years old, is not. Gabriel has been the strictest about COVID precautions among all the people I know from the very start, and I'm talking disinfectant galore, washing clothes as soon as he returns to the house, only getting grocery from delivery, disinfecting grocery foods and letting it sit for several days before consuming it, limiting visitors inside the house to himself, Lea, Tess, and Stephanie (since Tess lives half the week with Gabriel and half the week with Stephanie). Even after information came out that risks were not as high by certain measures as originally suspected—transmission from surfaces, for example—Gabriel still really never altered his supremely careful behavior. He's already told me he probably won't change any of his protocols at all until, at the very least, Tess has been vaccinated.

I would say that I have been far more careful than most people, but compared to Gabriel I might as well have taken up Jell-O wrestling with unmasked strangers in small sealed rooms. I've been regularly going grocery shopping in grocery stores all along; I didn't even finally start wearing face masks when going out until sometime in April last year (April 20, actually) which was over a month into the pandemic and honestly kind of shocking even to me looking back; I had the audacity to take two-night trips away from home twice last year, once for Shobhit's and my anniversary to the coast in June and once to visit my brother in August after Mom's death in July. In my defense, in neither of those trips did I stay inside anywhere with anyone other than Shobhit; even visiting my brother, we all sat socially distances in the grass outside the house. But, the point here is, Gabriel would never have done even that.

There was even a moment last night when we were talking about my not being "fully vaccinated," which is technically defined by being two weeks past your second shot. I noted that I'll have my two weeks on Tuesday, and he just said, "So: not fully vaccinated." I'm choosing to regard that as "close enough," and I don't think Gabriel can even fathom of thinking that way.

And I'm not trying to characterize him as being unreasonable here—I don't really feel that way at all, and in fact I get it. And it's specifically the reason I suggested he be first on my "Birth Week agenda" here, specifically so that I would not be around him after having been around far more people than I've been around in the space of a week since February 2020. Indeed, today itself, I am headed down to stay the night with Jennifer, my first time staying overnight with someone aside from Shobhit, again, since February 2020. (It's also my first time staying overnight with Jennifer, which I usually do every year, since 2019.)

We won't get into where Jennifer and Matthew are in the process of vaccination (in fact I don't even know where Matthew's at). Suffice it to say that I am vaccinated (okay, three days short of two weeks past), and will be the only person from one other household, which technically still puts us within currently allowable recommended guidelines. I just know that Gabriel would have been far more comfortable seeing me before I did this than after.

And very much to Gabriel's credit, even though this was only my second visit to his house, the first being as far back as June of last year, and I still wasn't allowed inside—I worried about what we'd do if at one point I'd really need to pee, but thankfully that never became an issue—he still really made it work. I was even thinking I would bring chai in a thermos and pack a sandwich, so they wouldn't have to worry about dealing with food. To my surprise, they actually did make dinner and Gabriel texted me beforehand not to bother with packing. sandwich: they would be making personal pizzas. We did sit a good six feet away from each other, but we still actually ate around the same table out on their spacious back balcony. Okay, it's true, they did still set up their own separate tiny table at the other end, as though my germs might march in battle formation right across the table to his plate—okay, I'm being unnecessarily snide now, I'm sorry! Sometimes I just can't stop myself.

I mean, we did still eat together, which of course necessitated taking masks off while we were eating. I honestly think that alone means even Gabriel has relaxed a little since he's gotten vaccinated. I can't imagine he would have gone for that when Shobhit and I had stopped by in June (the fact that in that case we only had about an hour to visit notwithstanding; we were on our way to the coast on that day and also stopped by Dad and Sherri's backyard the same day).

Hey, I haven't even mentioned the first State Park yet! I had been thinking I had been to this park before, but maybe not; I discovered I had been confusing it with Browns Point, the park that had been near the apartment Gabriel and Kornelija had lived in. Lea was busy making and baking the pizzas (which were phenomenal) and Tess was interested in hanging out with friends, so it was just Gabriel and me who went—he had said it was walking distance from his house. I had thought maybe I would drive straight to the park first, but he told me to go to the house first so we could walk over there.

I did not realize that most of the walk would be down the beach. I had actually already made a mental note to myself to wear my lace shoes this week so they are easier for hiking, and then yesterday I just spaced it, slipping on my regular slip-on shoes out of force of habit when I left. They still worked fine, really, although there were some somewhat dubious moments walking down the largely wet beach at low tide. The park is about a mile down the beach from their house in Federal Way (the drive from home was around forty minutes), so it was a pretty good walk.

And, very pretty. I've been around Puget Sound all my life and I can still find myself in awe of its beauty. I still much prefer urban living, as I always have, but I do love being this close to so much natural beauty, especially with so many islands and waterways and lush greenery, and I can totally see why Gabriel loves living there. I sure loved having him so close when he lived in Columbia City from 2019 to mid-2020, but he hated that kind of city living. Being in far more natural environments is what gives him some measure of peace.

Gabriel suggested walking back not along the beach again, but along a trail through the park, even though it was, as he put it, "a commitment." That's how we arrived at the photo at the top of this post: if you look closely, both Gabriel and I are in the shot, in both cases in kind of surprising spots. I look like a creeper and Gabriel looks like he's trying to hide from me. It cracks me up. My hope, actually, is to get a shot kind of like this at all of the state parks I visit: where at first glance it looks like just a picture of the scenery, but if you look close you can find us kind of semi-hiding in it.

There's even a campground in the middle of Dash Point State Park, and a surprisingly large one at that. I was impressed such a place could be found in the middle of a city—I mean, Federal Way is still a suburb, but the closer you get to the water the more it feels like you're out in the sticks, even though Federal Way's city limits border Tacoma's. (That same border delineates the line between Pierce and King Counties, which means that even though Federal Way kind of functions more as a suburb of Tacoma, Gabriel and I still live in the same county.) Gabriel said this campground is one of the most accessible in all of Puget Sound, which would make sense given its proximity to the surrounding urban development.

It took a while, but we made it back to the house. The pizza had been ready before we even started walking back, so when Lea had texted to tell him so, Gabriel called her to say she and Tess could go ahead and eat without us. So, when we got back, it was really just Gabriel and me who ate, with Lea sitting with Gabriel on the other side of the table as he ate.

After that, we had originally discussed watching a movie, specifically the first in the Fast and the Furious series, but we realized there really wasn't going to be time for that. They still set up their projector on that back patio, though, Lea even setting up an umbrella in case it started to rain as the weather was already starting to turn yesterday and it was getting chilly. And, we watched the finale of The Falcon and the Winter Solder, which, by the way, really did not live up to the promise of the episodes that came before it. But, whatever. It gave us all something fun to do together—even Tess, who did join us for that. So, she'll also get a Social Review point for yesterday. She'll be thrilled!

I'm sure glad I brought layers. I went to the car to get my hoodie, which I then wore under my jacket, and still I accepted the blanket Lea offered me. Apparently it was made out of plastic! Could that have any part of how incredibly effective it was at keeping me warm, I wonder!

Oh, and before we started the show, they all sang me Happy Birthday (an expectation I literally never have, for the record), while Lea brought out the "blondie cookie/brownie she had made for me. In fact, she had texted me earlier in the day to ask if I preferred brownies or cookies, and I told her to surprise me. So she combined the two—quite literally: it had a sandwich cookie embedded into the center of it. And, it was fucking delicious. They also gifted me with a six month subscription to WOW Presents Plus, I guess so I can see more of the drag queen stuff he wishes I would watch—I'm just excited because it's the home of my favorite Drag Queen show on YouTube (and really the only one I watch), "UNHhhh," which I believe lives there before being accessible on YouTube. In any case, I never want anything more than to hang out for my Birth Week really, but then they insist on being far more generous than I ask for! What jerks.

You know what? In spite of the unusual restrictions and circumstances this year—or perhaps to a degree even because of them—this year is actually one which, I think, will leave me with some of my fondest memories of a Birth Week activity with Gabriel. It sucked that I still couldn't go inside the house, but that aside, I really had a great time last night. I mean, I probably would have regardless, considering how little time we've been able to spend physically around each other in well over a year. But I also very much enjoyed every phase of this visit: the walk to Dash Point State Park, the homemade sourdough crust pizza dinner (did I mention that pizza was excellent?), the outdoor screening of a flawed but fun superhero TV show.

Also, the forced outside-activity worked in my favor in another way: under normal circumstances I often find myself out later than I would necessarily want to be, when hanging out with Gabriel. But, it was dark and getting too cold, so, after just a few minutes more of visiting (including Gabriel's demonstration of his beloved toy light sabers), I got back into my rental car and drove back home, getting home at the truly very reasonable hour of 10:20.

That allowed me to get to bed at a time that was not too late, and I was able to get up early enough this morning to bang out this post before getting ready for today, soon after which I will pack for the night and head for the Bremerton ferry as the first leg of my trip to Jennifer and Matthew's new house in Union.

Oh! But just one last thing: the full photo album for yesterday can be found here on Flickr. I have not had time yet to caption the photos, of course, but I do have them tagged, and after reading this blog post you should have a pretty good sense of them anyway.

[posted 8:58 am]