Today, I’m celebrating my birthday.

I had to postpone it a bit for the best of reasons, but still: YAY! I get to take the day off. No homeschooling. No cleaning. No working on the new book (although I’ll have a notepad handy for unexpected ideas).

Instead, I’ll be kicking back to watch all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies, along with delivery Indian food for dinner, along with a not-birthday cake for my not-birthday (I don’t much like cake, so I’ll be having fruit salad with no nasty cantalopes), along with fancy beer. The movies are about eleven and a half hours, not including various bathroom, meal, and birthday song breaks, so I’m planning to start early.

I’m also planning to be offline most of the day.

Last year, I celebrated my birthday this same way, and I found it incredibly rejuvenating. And I don’t just mean emotionally. It refilled the well creatively in a way I hadn’t expected, and I spent weeks and weeks aching to binge on the movies again. With luck, I can satisfy that ache with the Tom Shippey Tolkien book I’m reading, and an upcoming re-read of the trilogy.

Have a great day, you guys. That’s what I’m planning to do.