Real nice clambake

[janetlin]

I woke up today feeling pretty yick. Like, take a wastebasket with me in the car on the way to work, and possibly leave early if I didn't improve kind of yick. Fortunately, neither of the above were necessary, and the day in fact turned out to be pretty darn cool. When I checked my email at lunch, the top page of my inbox was _full_ of Facebook notifications of people leaving Happy Birthday messages on my wall, and two LJ notifications of virtual gifts (thank you, jinxed_wood and eonone!). That made me ridiculously happy.

Then my boss/aunt and coworker brought out a chocolate cake that apparently had been sitting in the kitchen and I never saw it. Funny, 'cause usually I end up going in there at least once every day. But I guess not today. Which worked out well, because the surprise was nice.

Then Mom came to get the car seat out of my car because she's taking Morgan for the weekend. I'll come back to this part.

I finish work, come home, la de da, take a shower, shave my legs, and was going to treat myself to a manicure. But as I was walking to the car, it occurs to me that since I don't have an appointment, I might have to wait, and if that goes too long I'll be in the middle of the manicure when Alan gets out of work and calls me to pick him up. So I turn around and walk back inside and play around in the patio garden instead. Now, I never thought I was the gardener type. But I frickin' love playing with my flowers. I repotted two of Morgan's plants, one of which desperately needed it because it was pretty pot-bound in its little container (I think the troop leaders didn't expect the girls to actually take enough care of their "mystery seeds" for them to actually grow). I only belatedly realized that I probably ought to put gloves on instead of doing it with my bare hands, but dirt is fun. I saved my daffodils from a snail - do snails burrow? this one seemed to be burrowing - though the agapanthus in the parking lot on the other side of my wall might not thank me for that ;).

I've distracted myself. Birthday, yes. Alan called when he got off work and I went and picked him up and we drove to Buca di Beppo for dinner. Where Mom, Rich, Morgan, Dad, and Rew are all waiting for us. O_O !! My sneaky bastard husband (which some of you may remember from a few years back) had my whole family in on this surprise for like a _week_! Even Morgan! Since when can five-year-olds keep secrets this well?

So Mom says that she was actually kind of worried when she saw me earlier in the day, that I might be suspicious that she didn't give me a card or something (didn't even occur to me). I'm usually not this clueless. I'm generally the wishful thinking type who puts two and two together and comes up with five. Dad and Rew even took that into account and conspired; they figured Dad's little Miata with his vanity plate sitting in the parking lot would give the game away, so they parked Dad's car at Rew's apartment and drove to the restaurant in Rew's car. Which I parked just _one_ car away from when we arrived. I noticed nothing. And I am told that as the waitress was walking us to what I thought was our empty table, I actually looked right at the full table in the corner (where Rew was carefully hiding/distracting Morgan) and it still didn't register until Alan pointed to them and Mom waved at me and Morgan popped out from behind Rew and said, "Surprise!" Dang.

So outside of the embarrassment at being so oblivious, it was a lovely evening. The food was nom and the company was good, and it turns out Rew's plans for tomorrow have been scrapped, so we will be able to go up to the County and introduce Dad to the BSG boardgame after all. Yay!!