Queen For A Day, Now Back To Reality

What a fan-tab-u-lous birthday I had yesterday! I felt like a celebrity for almost a solid twelve hours.



Things went so well in fact that by the evening, I felt sick to my stomach from it being so perfect, romantic, wonderful and all that mushy stuff that I'm not used to feeling. I want to remember this great occasion though so here is a recap of the day's events:

Wednesday, August 12th started out with Kirk waking me up at 5:30 a.m. about fifteen minutes earlier than our alarm clock normally goes off. What the hell? But kind of sweet actually. He had been up for an hour and wanted to give me my gifts.

Kirk: "Do you want to open up your presents first or eat breakfast first? I made you breakfast."

Me: "DUH! Open presents first," I said. Food can wait. Gifts always take priority. (Am I right?)

So he brings out a large box and a small box. Two gifts for me? The first one was a box full of books. Each one was from Writer's Market and contained information on how to write and become published including a listing of all companies that did publishing in 2009. It was great! He knows I am finally taking my writing seriously and he researched to find me some tools to help make that happen. (That's a more practical, thoughtful gift than my usual piece of jewelry that I receive from Sears.)

The second box was my "geeky" gift from him, as he put it. He always has to find a way to put his nerdy stamp or technological expertise into my gifts (which is great!) I opened up the neatly wrapped package. It is a voice recorder. He pressed "play" on it before I could ask any questions. I suddenly hear a conversation between Vivian and him. He was trying to get her to say "Happy Birthday" or "Mom" or "I Love You."

Well, I'm sure you can just picture the tears streaming down my face. It was so sweet and so precious to hear their voices and to hear their interaction. The clarity and crispness of their voices were unbelievable. Vivian is only just now starting to talk and say a few words (at 21 months old). So she was saying a lot of jibberish of course but it was funny and adorable.

Kirk said he did a lot of reading on recording devices and chose the best one out there based on reviews, a Sony IC Recorder. He said I could use it for taking notes in my upcoming writing classes in October in addition to future interviews I may conduct on people if I ever go to work for a newspaper or magazine (Gosh, I would love that!) Best of all, I can use it for recording Vivian's voice as she learns to speak. I can then turn around and send the voice recording of Viv to our family and friends (e-mailed as a MP3 recording).

I honestly couldn't think of a more wonderful gift than that! I just sat there on our bed (with my messy hair, bad breath and eye crust), hugged him and just cried. I played the message back again to hear their precious voices. More happy tears fell down my cheek. I absolutely loved it and I completely loved my husband for coming up with this unique gift for me.

Kirk said that as he and Viv were conversing, he held up a family picture of us and when he said, "mom", she'd point to me but she wouldn't say the word. Actually she said some very funny sounds, even ones that resembled Spanish words. LOL! Something that resembled "pronto" or maybe "mentos" - I don't know exactly. It was just so cute! The kind of thing you want to bottle up and take with you in your purse and pull it out whenever you're having a hard day. To hear your child's voice being so innocent. I'm so glad we have technology like this to capture her youth since she is growing so fast. I realize that we have a video camera too but videos are so much more of a pain to download/upload and e-mail or post. These little MP3 sound files should be a lot easier for us to share.

Then I had breakfast. Kirk brought me my meal in bed, a scrambled egg with cheese on an English muffin. My favorite! It was really good. Oh, and he had coffee for me too. The man is a genius, I tell you.

He later left for work and told me the day was only beginnning and that more was to come. He wasn't kidding!

Around 10:30 a.m., I received a delivery at my office. A beautiful arrangement of red roses and stargazer lilies. (The lilies are my favorite!) It was breathtakingly gorgeous and wonderfully smelling up my entire desk area. Now normally, I'm not big into flowers and I don't receive them often. But on my birthday, as a surprise, I sure enjoyed them.



Then my husband arrived at my employer's for 11:00 a.m. (He startled me, I thought he was just picking me up at 11:30 to have lunch). In his arms, he carried a box full of petit four mini-cakes and a whole cake (Peanut Butter & chocolate). Wow, this was too much! What did I do to deserve all this?





I handed out the petit fours to all of my co-workers and put the cake in the fridge for later. Then we went off to lunch - Mexican, my favorite. I ate way too many fully loaded nachos. And I had a margarita. Don't tell my boss.



Heck, even my boss gave me a gift certificate for a free pedicure. And she told me I could leave two hours early! Hooray!

And my daughter Vivian had been in a great mood too (not her usual cranky morning self) that whole day. She didn’t even fuss or whine when I dropped her off at day care.





COULD THIS DAY HAVE BEEEN ANY BETTER?

Actually, after I left work early, I decided to stop at a store called Ross to browse a few things. I spent an hour there trying on various clothes and left with four shirts and a black dress for $57. Not bad! It truly was my lucky day. I normally don't have much luck shopping for myself, especially when it comes to clothes.

I went home that evening and spent a mostly quiet night at home with my family. I was still full from my lunch and all the treats I ate earlier. I was tired too, from all the excitement of the day. So I skipped dinner and went to bed early. Yeah, I'm old now.

So that was my birthday! I don’t know how Kirk will ever top this one! He really pulled out all the stops for me.

I asked him why he did so much and what I did to deserve such royal treatment. He simply said that I'm a wonderful wife and a wonderful mother and that he wanted it to be a special day for me. (Liar, he just wants sex! I'm kidding!!! Sort of....) But seriously, thank you to Kirk and to all those people who remembered me on this 31st birthday. It will be one that I never forget.

Now it's back to reality and the usual routine. But that's okay. All that pampering and attention can get old. How do celebrities keep up this sort of lifestyle? I'm being serious! It's just exhausting. Sure it's fun every so often, but not something I want or need all the time.


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P.S. - If you liked this sentimental post, look for the story of how Kirk and I met on Monday, August 17th. That will be our seven-year wedding anniversary and I'm working on that post to give details on the interesting way we met. Stay tuned!