I Made Him Have a Happy Birthday

Toby doesn’t really care about birthdays. It’s just a lot of social obligation and hassle according to him. His birthday wish would be to be left completely alone in front of his computer all day.

This year I said no. I’m just not granting that wish. It’s no fun. We need more fun in our life. So in my passive aggressive manner I managed to pull off a half way decent birthday. I also probably will cause half of his clients to call up tomorrow morning steaming mad because he won’t get all his work done in time for their deadlines tomorrow. But you know what? Toby works EVERY DAY! It’s all about work all the time and if it weren’t for me and Net-flicks I don’t think he could hold a decent conversation any more. I am his life-line to the real world. And I think birthdays are important.

So I woke him up at the crack of noon (he works all night so he gets up late) and made him open his presents. I seriously had to bribe him with a cup of coffee first. I wanted him to open them yesterday but he refused. He didn’t even think he needed presents. What could I possibly get him that he wanted? Well, I was tricky and I got him four things that he actually found interesting. In fact, he stayed in bed for an hour or so looking at them. I got him the two Jason Bourne movies on dvd, a Kruder Dorfmeister cd AND a book of early California graphics. You know, orange crate art and stuff like that. He really liked the book.

Then I made some awful pancakes and we ate those. I let him work for a while after breakfast, because I’m not completely cruel (and because I had an hour and a half long conference call with the group I’m going to Paris with. Wooo! But I’ll tell you about that later). In the afternoon I picked his mom up and brought her over to our house.

I haven’t really been updating you on Toby’s mom but she is doing good. I’m visiting with her every other day and last week I actually took her to the beach. It’s a long slow process but I think we are both being very honest with each other and things are good. Anyway… I knew it would mean a lot to her to be with Toby on his birthday. It wasn’t exactly Toby’s wish to be with his mom but once she was here he was glad she was. Things are tough between Toby and his mom.

She couldn’t afford a present of course, so her gift to him was to tell him how he was born. Up until today Toby knew very little about his birth. In fact he didn’t even know what hospital he was born in. It was very nice to have some of the blanks filled in. While they sat around in the living room trying to be like a normal family doing normal things like talking, I clanged around in the kitchen and made a Fabulous Dinner… just like on my nifty new list (a link I stole fromwee). Actually it was just a run of the mill dinner but at least it wasn’t a flop like last night. Last night’s dinner gave us both nightmares. Too much sodium I think.

After dinner we even had a cake! A pretty gelato cake that I bought from the gelato store. But Toby loves gelato so it was perfect. It even had a dendrobium orchid on top made completely out of sugar. Too bad I didn’t take a picture. Toby loves orchids. He used to have a whole greenhouse of them before he became a successful photographer and had to work all the damn time. (I’m beginning to see a theme here.)

His mom and I sang Happy Birthday in our wimpy girly voices and Toby blew out the candles. I made him make a wish. Somebody’s got to keep these traditions going! I think he liked his little birthday party. He smiled and seemed happy but I know he was stressed because he has so much work to be done before Monday morning.

It makes me sad sometimes that his life is flying by him and it’s all because some real estate agent needs a picture of a house at xyz time so that pqr magazine can run an ad and sell a house. I know it’s their job and somebody has to do it… but sometimes when I answer the phone in the morning and they are screaming at me wondering where their pictures are, I want to scream “Give me my husband back!” I know it’s his battle and he has to figure out how to fight it himself. But sometimes…sometimes I just wanna ring me some real estate agent neck.