Craig and I spend the day

After last night’s festivities, I spent a much welcome quiet day today. My original plan was to go rollerblading down by the beaches and take in some people-watching, but as usual, my mother, at the last minute, tells me that we have to go plant flowers at my father’s grave site. So I ended up canceling my plans and spent the early afternoon elbow-deep in dirt.

Much as I love flowers, I don’t know if I could ever get into gardening. Handling dirt, even with the protection of gloves, is a bit gross when you have to deal with fat, gooey-looking worms and other icky-looking creepy-crawlies that call the earth home.

The rest of the afternoon I spent working on my lariat necklace. There’s something very therapeutic about the repetitive threading of beads…After sitting quietly for a few hours with Craig David on my iPod, I ran out of the seed beads that make up much of my necklace. Guess I’ll have to drop into the bead store sometime tomorrow to pick up some more supplies.

(Funny thing—there was a lady at our table last night at dinner who also beads. It came up in conversation after I’d left and she gave my mother a list of bead stores to pass on to me, which I found very thoughtful.)

So the parties…both were to celebrate birthdays, and interestingly enough, there’s a 1:3 ratio of decades to guests. (I have no plans to celebrate the big 3-0 in such a grand fashion. I think I’d be content to let it pass quietly.)

The first was a sit-down Chinese banquet for a very dear and old friend of the family who is celebrating his 90th year. There were probably about 300 guests, some of whom had flown in from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the U.S. and Jamaica to attend. As one of the first Chinese to arrive from Jamaica, he has helped settle the many who followed him—my father included. He’s literally (with about 100 godchildren and counting) and figuratively the Godfather of the Chinese Jamaican and Hakka community in Toronto. His life story is a fascinating one and I wish I could have stayed the entire evening, but I had to leave after the 5th course—missing the roast chicken and lobster dish!!—to make it for my friend’s 30th birthday bash in Yorkville.

Party #2 was a small gathering of about 100 friends. The patio of the restaurant/bar was reserved for the birthday boy and there was champagne, finger foods, and loot bags on hand. Despite the big group, it was a pretty low-key night for me since I was able to catch up with some friends that I hadn’t seen in a while and take in the fine scenery—it's too bad and so sad for me that the cuties present don’t play on my team.