Saturday night Dave was sick as a sailor, which in turn made me as sad a clown with a case of the weepies. His sick meant that I thought I would be on my own for a Saturday night pre-birthday celebration. But after sending out a pathetic and groveling text to my most magnificent pals, Bobby and Ashley, my prince and princess in shining armor cuddled up to the task of being my dates. They took me to dinner, they escorted me to a super hip bar where we had ultra fancy drinks and they even made me laugh at how young my leggings looked.
At the bar we were served the most amazing libations by the bartender who really is a chemist and also happens to be an old friend from high school who I just got reacquainted with recently and who continues to win mixologist awards from coast to coast. It was mellow and adult and terrific but I was so worried about Dave and his off-gray skin tone early that evening, that I rushed home sooner than I would normally and forgot to close out my tab like a fucking amateur party tramp.
I am currently horrified, mortified, petrified and putrefied by my lack of awareness and forgetfulness. Yes, I was once a bartender and seethed, on many an occasion, when someone would flake on the check. NO tip, no bar back tip, no formal thank you, no way! How could I possibly have spaced paying my tab, especially dressed like a black liquorice on the prowl? When I finally realized my gigantic gaff I left a frantic Facebook message for the bartender at 12:15 a.m. telling him I would be in on Tuesday with cash in hand and a huge bouquet of pale yellow apologies.
The upside is that I got home before midnight so I could spend the first few minutes of my new number with Dave, my emotional left leg. Besides a Happy Birthday song, I really wanted to make sure he hadn't come down with Dengue Fever followed by an Ebola chaser. When I saw his fuzzy, friendly face his color was less cement and more boiled meat and that alone, made me calm down and relax after hours of unwarranted concern. Dressed like the Sears pajama sale section he hugged me and coughed over my shoulder and it was germy and awesome and just what this birthday slut wanted.
Sunday, my official birthday arrived and Dave woke up partly healed and gave me a delicious day. Breakfast out with my boys, road trip to IKEA, a kick-ass Christmas tree purchase deep in the (818), Farmer's Market drive-by and late afternoon family time with Otto dressed as an astronaut while Dave cooked my favorite, all-time, if-I-were-on-death-row-and-had-a-last-meal-request, meal, Spaghetti Bolognese. We trimmed the tree, sang random holiday songs and pretended to shoot of to Uranus in a super fast rocket.
I felt blessed and happy and hardly older and as lucky as a Kardashian seat cushion on its day off. The only thing missing was a cake. Dave was too worn out and I was not that interested, even though Otto would have loved the sugary button on the end of such a great birthday hang.
But for the sake of birthdays past and tradition and overall sentimentality, I give you a photo of the only cake I really wanted, a towering tribute to my wonderful, lovely and always generous mother who made it for me every, single year until I turned twenty-three at which point I lived too far away to eat it right off the cake plate.
It was the amazing, regal and show-stopping Enchanted Castle Cake, a mass of sweet goodness she found in the 1970 edition of Betty Crocker's New Boys and Girls Cookbook, a cookbook made famous for Mother's Day Spam and Pineapple Loaf and something called a Fruit Basket Upset which involves canned fruit cocktail, mini marshmallows, whipped cream and red dye # 2. Turn to page 55 and you will quickly see that the creepy, coagulated concoction looks even worse than it sounds.
So, with that, I end my birthday whoring with a round of thanks to my wonderful husband, Otto and his outrageous love hugs, my fantastic pals who sent me so many wishes and toasts, an original Sony Walkman, the gift of the century that blew my doors open, a bartender and his brilliance and my mother's joyous joo-joo floating around me all day. My birthday was perfection wrapped in an all-white, hermetically sealed anti-aging envelope and I licked the glue with gusto.
4 comments:
Love the picture (and its joyful memories), and hope the bartender gets paid! Lots of birthdays go kind of funky -- it's kind of like the more you have the more strange ones there are in the list! Happy prime birthday, and much love, M.
are those upside down ice cream cone towers? I might cry....
Yes to the towers and yes to my mother's amazingly hard work ethic!
Wow. I can barely manage to spit out a boxed cake mix. Happy Bday, but I would've never guess 43.
Post a Comment