My birthday weekend... um...
Weeellllll...
It had its moments.
Lots of them.
It started like this... on Friday I was in a horrible mood.
(Edited to add: Look photos! Typepad must be feeling better.)
As I posted before, Big E was having trouble getting Friday off. On Monday, he was to find out on Tuesday, on Tuesday it was pushed to Wednesday.. an so on, through the week. Until Friday morning when I learn that he was supposed to find out at 3 if he had to work at 4 pm.
Ya. Our destination was 4 hours away.. if we find out at 3, leave at 3:30... you do the math.
Did I mention I was in a horrible mood? Did I mention all of the urges I suppressed? How about the fact that Big E's being asleep was all that saved him from a verbal (and perhaps physical) hiding?
And then my mom came and whisked me off to lunch just as Big E emerged from the bedroom and before I could beat him senseless with a spoon have a heartfelt conversation with him about our weekend plans.
Lunch was relaxing, lovely, and tasty, and by the time we returned home Big E had the day off. There was a whirlwind of packing, moving children to my mom's, and loading up the car and then we were on the road.
I was still in a grumpy mood. A "why should I even bother to try and celebrate my birthday" kind of mood.
And then Big E said to me, "You know why you're in a bad mood?"
I resisted the urge to say "Because you're a big stupid poopy head with a poopy head job?" and just said, "Why?" in a tone that Sweet G uses (right before she gets a time out).
"Because last year I had pneumonia for your birthday. And the year before? Your birthday started with a 1:30 am phone call from me at homicide detectives after someone tried to kill me. That was on a night I was supposed to be home by 10 pm so we could do things on your birthday. The year before that, you had the flu for your birthday and had to cancel your own dinner. That's why you're in a bad mood. That's why you're sure everything is going to go wrong."
"Oh.... I hadn't thought of any of that... maybe you have a point." Okay, so maybe my subconscious was working, while my conscious brain suppressed memories of birthdays recently past... I hadn't thought of any of those things. From last year I remember Sweet G's breakfast in bed, the flowers Big E brought me even though it almost killed him (no that's not a joke), and the fabulous feast my mom prepared. And the year before that? Big E had three close calls that winter, including one the night before my birthday where a suicidal man decided he wanted to take someone with him when he died. That was a tough winter and I try not to think about it at all.
I would like to say this epiphany changed everything and my birthday weekend was the best trip ever, but it wasn't. Parts of it were marvelous, and parts of it were just hard. I have lots of photos, fabulous finds, and stories of our adventures, but I'll save those for another post. Tomorrow is Monday and Typepad won't publish any photos for me (what a big poopy-head blog service).