BIRTHDAY SCENES

Amazing how life loves to screw with you. Or best laid plans, blah blah blah. It was the boy's birthdy on July 10 and wanted to have some fun with it. NOTE: He hates surprises and I love to be creative. Translation-collision course inevitable, but it keeps life interesting.

Anyway the daughter, son and I decided to get Dad an MP3 player. They are the techies but I thought he might like it for exercise, driving for Saturn or playing his "Hermans Hermits" greatest hits without inflicting it on the rest of the civilized world. Actually he said now he needs to find Patty Dukes' one and only album on CD so he load it one -EWWWWW, but I digress. Anyway I pick one up that has 8GB on it (more memory) and the kids decide, no he needs the Apple IPOD. So they go buy that one and I have to take the first one back. So far so good.

Second stage-I talk to his golf partner and say drag him to the sports bar after golf tuesday and we will all be there with cake and assorted bells and whistles on. Meanwhile the boy asks -are we doing anything tusday night? I kind of go hmmm hmmm and he says fine, he'll just golf then.

Here's the fun part. K & M are supposed to pick me up at 8:00 to go to the golf course when the mother of all lightening storms moves in-are they golfing or not? Then at 6:15 Burt's golf partner calls and says I'm so sorry, I was locked out of my car, had to walk home, and ahh ahh I'm not at the golf course. Shisskeeee. Ok-plan B-go to golf course as planned and put a note on his truck -not quite the surprise, but that'll work. Meanwhile I retrieve the cake I baked from the dryer-he would never look there-and have the plates, etc ready to go on the counter.

Plan mess-up #3. At 7:20 birthday boy waltzes through the back door and I am sitting there with the cake, etc in front of me. Thinking quickly I yell "Surprise". Oh well. K & M came over and spent the next hour a half getting the IPOD to work so we had a good time.

Other neat thing was watching my daughter's interaction with her husband as they struggle with the computer, download software, screw around with too little directions to get the IPOD up and running. To all those married folks out there who have tried to put something together- cribs, toys, christmas gifts- you know how ugly it can get. "Read the freaking directions" "I don't need to, I'm not an idiot" "Yes you are" and so on. The two of them do that but in a loving and bantering way. Really nice. They seem to know each other very well.