Birthday

[liv]

I am generally not feeling sparkly or enthusiastic, for probably obvious reasons. It's my 43^rd birthday in ten days and I haven't even started organizing anything. So I'm going to resort to asking the the internet to make my decisions for me like we're back in the 2000s.

Poll #26459 Birthday

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 31

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What should Liv do to celebrate her birthday?

View Answers

Meetup in a park for local people
6 (20.0%)

Specifically invite local people to a party in the garden
10 (33.3%)

Zoom party
7 (23.3%)

Party using some other social software eg Discord, GatherTown, shared spreadsheet, watch party
9 (30.0%)

Stay home with the bubble and have a chill day
13 (43.3%)

Find somewhere which still does outdoor dining and invite a small group for a celebratory meal
2 (6.7%)

Order in celebratory food
20 (66.7%)

Arrange individual calls with friends throughout the day
12 (40.0%)

Skip birthday this year as it's all too depressing
0 (0.0%)

SEWIWEIC
1 (3.3%)

I might be interested in coming to:

View Answers

Park meetup near Cambridge, England
3 (18.8%)

Garden party in Cambridge, England
2 (12.5%)

Zoom party during daytime GMT
7 (43.8%)

Zoom party in the evening GMT
9 (56.2%)

Low-key online party mainly using text, not video
9 (56.2%)

Playing online versions of board games
4 (25.0%)

Watch party for a film or show
6 (37.5%)

Individual chat to wish Liv happy birthday and catch up
8 (50.0%)

Considerations:

• We are in a really hellacious omicron wave, with cases both nationally and locally higher than they have ever been previously during the pandemic. I'm not going to do anything involving travel or indoor socializing, and I'm not even sure I should be doing outdoor socializing, especially not if it involves increasing the risk to employees.
• It's the middle of Christmas, specifically the bank holiday after the Christmas weekend; lots of people who might otherwise want to hang out with me are going to be busy.
• December in the South of England is usually cold but not unbearably so; I expect temperatures of around 5-10°C, so it's possible (though not really pleasant) to socialize outdoors if you have a decent coat, but it's also quite likely to be windy or raining.

The ever-wonderful ghoti_mhic_uait has arranged a fun birthday-related activity for a couple of days later, involving an outdoor light show. That might still be cancelled because of plague, but I'm reasonably hopeful that I will get a birthday treat even if I ignore the actual day.

On some level I am aware that I shouldn't listen to generally low mood after months and months of hermitting and gradually draining away any hope of the plague situation improving at all. I almost certainly will feel better if I have some kind of social contact, but I'm desperately short of motivation and energy to arrange anything. I don't really fancy a cold miserable outdoor gathering, and I don't really fancy yet another video call even though I really enjoyed the one I did for my 42^nd.

Anyway, what should I do? Words of encouragement greatly appreciated

Comments

[mrissa]

Are there food-things that you like disproportionately to the rest of your family? Like for example my family likes plantains like normal people might like plantains, whereas I love plantains beyond all reason. Even if you have one or two extra hoomans in the garden with you but SPECIAL LIV DISH TO FOLLOW, that combination might feel more festive?

I don't know, I'm a very simple person who did a dance around the kitchen because I got roasted broccoli this week, in some ways I'm a very bad person to ask about celebrating because I will in fact celebrate "ooh broccoli it got the crispy bits on" and I understand that other people's brains do not obligingly do that.

[liv]

Thank you, this is a very good idea. Exciting food is a good way to make my birthday feel special. When I'm not in pandemic fog I absolutely do dance around happily because I get to eat a tasty ingredient, but these last few months I've been finding it hard to get excited about even more conventionally exciting things. Depending just how severe a lockdown we get (there are a lot of rumours that we're back indoors for a month starting on my birthday because the politicians "don't want to spoil Christmas"), I have a plan to order crepes. And I guess if they close the restaurants even for delivery, I can always make crepes, that's not a terrible hardship either.