it's my birthday somewhere, but not here anymore

August 31 has come and gone here in Seoul, so hail, September!

I tried, at first, to get to #3 Ajumma's place via cab, but at 7:30 p.m., most cabs are heading away from the Jamshil area, not toward it, so I gave up on the taxis, got on the subway, and texted Ajumma to say I'd be late. Her apartment sits about 750 meters away from Ogeum Station, so I arrived at Ogeum and walked the rest of the way in the pouring rain (luckily, I did have an umbrella with me).

Ajumma and her son GY—my cousin—greeted me, and they both noticed right away that I had lost a lot of weight. As I guessed, Ajumma wasn't really all that impressed, nor was she in the mood to flatter me for the weight loss. Instead, her reaction was, "You've lost so much weight! That's dangerous!" To be fair, I've been hearing cautious pronouncements from more than just Ajumma: my boss has darkly talked about how rapid weight loss can put a strain on your heart (which is technically true), and how starvation can eat away at your muscles (only partially true; fasting done wrong can eat away at your muscles). Anyway, with Ajumma, you just can't win. Stay fat, and she complains. Lose weight, and she complains. Is this what having a Jewish grandmother is like? Oy, gevalt.

I've mentioned a couple times that Ajumma is a talented painter, but not the greatest cook. She explicitly mentioned this during our dinner: "If your mother were here, you'd be eating a lot better," she intoned. I merely nodded and stayed diplomatically silent. All sons (well, almost all) love their mother's cooking. Actually, tonight's food really wasn't bad; it simply wasn't my favorite sort of food, is all. Anyway, Ajumma has tacitly tried to stay in my life as a sort of Mom surrogate, and I do appreciate her care. Like my friend JW, who can sometimes express his care in an asshole-y way, I understand that it really is the thought that counts, and that I sometimes have to look a little more deeply to see the care hidden under the chiding and the sermons and the apparent dissatisfaction. In all, it was a good birthday dinner.

We topped off the evening with a better-than-anticipated chocolate cake from a place called La Pâtisserie, then Ajumma asked her son to bring out The Melon (I have to capitalize because the fruit was pretty damn big), which GY awkwardly cut into pieces. I forgot to mention that our little party included some pre-dinner prayer and a pre-cake-cutting birthday song.

I had arrived at 8:30 p.m., and I didn't stay much longer than an hour. GY drove me home; we had some awkward moments in the car because we just don't see each other that often. GY has a six-year-old son and an infant daughter (GY is my cousin, so does that make me some sort of distant uncle?); he's looking for an English tutor for his son plus a small group of six-year-olds. I told him flatly that I don't teach that age group; it requires way too much energy. A few awkward silences later, and we arrived at my apartment. I bid GY adieu, and he was off.

Since I was still in "fuck it" mode about the unwanted cheat day, I grabbed some naughty items from the convenience store and gobbled them while watching YouTube. I'll start paying for all this in the morning. I didn't get to do my usual Tuesday stairs work, so that'll happen when I get up in a few hours, along with two sessions of resistance-band training. (Except for my shoulder raises, I may be ready to graduate to three bands instead of my current two. And while I'm nowhere near developing any real muscle, I can feel the shoulders and pecs hinting at the possibly of hardening. Building muscle is an active goal of mine because that will increase my metabolism, which is otherwise notoriously sluggish.)

So that was my birthday. Kind of quiet, but better than I thought it would be. Ajumma now knows a bit more about my keto diet (I think it's pronounced "keh-toh" in Korean: 케토), and once she learned about the shunning of most carbs, she loudly asked, "So why did you eat all that rice and those potatoes just now?" I explained that today was supposed to be a fasting day, but it had become a cheat day, so I was eating freely. Falling off the wagon a single day won't kill me. (And now that I know firsthand the deadly consequences of eating poorly for long periods of time, I mean that quite seriously.) Anyway, Ajumma gave me her standard, "Call me if you need anything" speech before I left, and she told me to warn her next time about my dietary needs so she'd know what to cook. I see her maybe three or four times a year, max, so I won't be talking with her about my diet that often.

And now, I have to look forward to my appointment on the 16th, a long walk starting on the 18th, and the rest of my life after that.