I had my first recyclable birthday.

It happens to everyone.

You didn’t blink an eye when you turned Bilbo Baggins’ age.  But then there’s another age you don’t like the sound of.

You are now “forever 39,” as Jack Benny said.

We enjoyed the revelry and the feast.  The pop-up birthday card (above), which turns into a music box and plays “Happy Birthday,”  was the highlight of the celebration. Yeah!  The cats loved the twirling dog on top of the cardboard cake.  And I made a real German chocolate cake in a new cake pan, and my husband surprised me with “birthday cake” ice cream.

Since I am recycling my age  (I am forever somewhat older than 39), we also recycled the birthday gifts.  I selected books I want to read off my husband’s shelves.  Some I gave him as birthday presents long ago.

Gifts, gifts, gifts!

This recycle-a-birthday collection includes:

Huysman’s Against Nature, a  fin de siècle novel whose decadent hero retires to a villa to pursue “luxury and excess.”

Most of the Most of S. J. Perelman, edited by Steve Martin, a collection of Perelman’s humor pieces, essays, and playlets.

Lawrence Thornton’s Sailors on the Inward Sea,  a meta-fictional novel about a disaster at sea in which Joseph Conrad is a character.

Carmen Laforet’s Nada, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman, an autobiographical novel about a young woman in Barcelona in the 1940s.

Talking Leaves: Contemporary Native American Short Stories, edited by Craig Lesley

The Life of Mary Jemison, “Who was taken by the Indians in the year 1755, when only about twelve years old, and has continued to reside among them to the present time.”

And Simone de Beauvoir’s The Blood of Others, a novel translated by Roger Senhouse and Yvonee Moyse.

A great birthday, yes?  I cannot guarantee that I will read all these books, but they look wonderful.

And here is pic of an alert cat helping me decide whether I should read or watch the Poldark (the DVD set of the “70s TV show was another gift!).  She seems to favor Poldark.