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Happy birthday with big fluffy snowflakes

I don’t think I’ve ever awakened on my birthday to discover that big fluffy snowflakes are falling and accumulating on the ground.

Especially since my birthday is April 21, and snow is generally out of the forecast at that point.

It might be muddy, moist and sweatshirt springy kind of weather, but blustery and snowy? And a freeze watch for good measure? Uhh, no, not as a rule.

But this is Ohio, and you’ve gotta’ love the Buckeye State.

As one friend so aptly noted on a Facebook post about the weather being one day this way and then the exact opposite the next — “Mother Nature is going through menopause. She was hot and now look!”

Yes, in Ohio, we hurry up and mow because the next day it could snow.

I was born on a Monday at 5:35 a.m., which explains maybe why I’m a morning person and maybe why I think of Mondays not as an oh-no-it’s-Monday kind of lament, but the beginning of, well, new beginnings.

I guess I saw the baby bottle half full early on.

My children and siblings are among those who always make the day something special.

Linda, my sister from the South, is like a year-round Santa on steroids who chronically gets scolded to no avail for going overboard.

She’s always in gift-delivery mode, always generous and always thoughtful.

And she’s always very efficient, given she sent me two b-i-g boxes that arrived at the house a good week before I turned 63, the age where I’m inching ever so closely toward that getting-more-in-sight Medicare goalpost.

The packages got parked in the living room. Like Christmas, the unwritten don’t-open-yet order was in effect, which I honored no matter how many times the urge to do otherwise gripped me each time I passed by them.

When I did rip into them, Better Half responded with oh-no commentary — mainly because I got a ton of new and unusual solar lights. He accuses me of having a carnival going all summer in the back yard with all the ones I already have. Really bigger show now.

And she sent me more coffee signs because you can never have too many in a kitchen decorated to that theme.

Better Half wondered otherwise during searches for more nails and more wall space to accommodate the new additions.

“There are more than a hundred up here,” Better Half pointed out to all the coffee decorations to a recent flower-delivering friend.

I accused him of exaggerating and asked for a recount. (I may have lost.)

Like Christmas, Better Half is always stumped about what to get me. He called the office on Wednesday with what really wasn’t stop-the-presses news, cautiously reminding me that he really didn’t get me anything.

Not to worry, dear, I reassured him. I’ll buy something on your behalf. Some things, that is. But no coffee stuff or solar lights, I promise.

I don’t feel any older or more mature although when I do look in the mirror these days, I think either my hair keeps getting shorter or my ears are getting bigger. Not that I can hear any better, of course.

I enjoyed the day and appreciated all the warm Happy Brrrrrthday wishes that came my way — and that’s “snow” joke.

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