a 32nd birthday flop

may 23rd, 2011

i wanted more than anything for john to feel special this year on his birthday. poor guy has always had to share his special day. growing up, it was with his twin {and their other brother - who's birthday is the very next day}. and then he met me and added yet another person to share his birthday with {mine's just two days later}. now i want to make this very clear, john certainly has never complained about being a twin or having to share his special day with anyone else, but still, i've always thought that everyone deserves their very own day to be honored and spoiled rotten. i do my best to accomplish just that every year for my sweet john. this year was a struggle, though. money's a bit tight, so he asked me not to get him anything. seriously, john? do you really think i could let you wake up on your birthday...without a single gift? you don't know me very well then, do you?
i tried to honor his request by at least getting him some practical gifts. for instance, he travels a lot, and his once trusty suitcase just recently had gone kaput, so i got him a new one. he dresses up for work everyday, and it's tough for me to keep up with the laundering and ironing {especially the ironing}, so i took his shirts to the cleaners {they did a much better job with those perfectly starched creases that he likes than i could ever dream of doing myself}. we got him a couple other super practical gifts including some new dress pants {he's been wearing the same 5 pairs for the past 5 or 6 years}, and a few gift certificates to get the cars washed. i know, not the least bit exciting, but i know if i had gotten him an ipad {or anything else fun and frivolous for that matter}, he most likely would have returned it. i think he was pretty happy with his realistic, useful, and {in my opinion} super boring gifts.
i lined up a babysitter for that evening, and surprised him with tickets to see the body worlds and the brain exhibition that was going on at the arizona science center. unfortunately, we got all the way downtown, only to find that the science center had closed 30 minutes prior to our arrival. i'm not at all familiar with downtown phoenix, so i had solicited the help of my facebook friends in picking a place to take him to dinner. one of the restaurants was described as being a cute, romantic, 1913 bungalow, re-born into a brick oven pizzeria. {the description had me at romantic}. we headed over to the restaurant, which was everything and more that i imagined, the atmosphere, the ambiance...but our server was rude, and clearly didn't like us {what's not to like about us?}, so we were pretty anxious to leave the minute the food had disappeared from our plates. my next plan was to hit up a cute little place for dessert, but to my dismay, it too, was closed for the evening. so now what? we wondered. a movie? nothing showing for another hour and a half to two hours. we ended up deciding to redbox a movie that we had both been wanting to see, and headed home to watch it while we snuggled up in bed together...but after just 30 minutes or so, i was out cold. oh brother, if that isn't the story of my life.
my dear john, i had every intention of making your 32nd birthday special and memorable, but you know that things rarely turn out how i envision and plan, so i apologize if the only thing you end up remembering about this birthday...
is how bad it flopped.
i promise this is not a reflection of the way i feel about you.
i love you more than i can express in words...
and {thankfully} more than my ability to make you feel special on your birthday.