November 5, 2006 ~ Birthday Bungle
Sunday.
Yesterday was Morgan's twenty-seventh birthday.
Weeks ago, I had planned the perfect surprise. We have not been out alone, just the two of us, since before Grove was born. Nearly a year with no time as a couple. So I knew exactly what he'd love. A nice restaurant downtown, maybe even a movie in a theater if we time it right. My full attention, for once.
So about two weeks ago, I was about to call Morgan's mom to see if she could come up on Morgan's Birthday to baby-sit when Morgan called me, excited. "Guess what?! Joel was planning to go to Raleigh on my birthday to see James and go to a college football game, and I'd like to go. We're going to have a tailgate party and everything. It's going to be fun... I'll stay the night at James' house and drive back in the morning... Is that all right with you?"
"Uh... yeah." Oh how amusing. My husband, who has never shown an interest in football at all, suddenly plans a two-day football adventure on the one day I'd planned a big surprise for him. GREAT. (Yeah, so I was looking forward to his birthday surprise myself, but can you blame me?)
Morgan heard the hesitation in my voice. "Uh oh. What?"
"Oh... I'd just... had a surprise planned for you. But we can do it another time instead. The game and Joel going down there and everything can't be rearranged. You should go. You guys will have fun."
Later that day his Mom called. "I was thinking of coming up, maybe with Larry [her husband], on Morgan's Birthday so that we can babysit while you two go out together..."
I couldn't help but chuckle at how we'd been thinking along the same lines. I explained about how I'd been thinking the same thing, but that Morgan had decided to go to Raleigh, but told her I'd love to take a rain check on her offer.
So Morgan went off to Raleigh early yesterday morning, and my mother-in-law and Larry came up anyway to spend some time with Grove and me (We went up to the wolfdog sanctuary and I gave them a tour. They had never been.)
This morning, Grove woke next to me, early, and instead of turning over and sleeping a little longer, he reached over where Morgan usually is in the bed and said, "Da-eee? Da. Da-eee?"
"He's not here," I explained. "But he'll be here later today. Want to surprise him? We'll have to make a trip to the store..."
This afternoon, after lunch I baked a chocolate cake and set it to cool on the table while we went to the store, where I bought some icing tools and Grove flirted with Every Stranger In Sight, leaving a trail of cooing smiling awwwwing women in our wake.
We came home, and I turned the cake out of the pan, cut it in half, spread raspberry filling on one half, then laid the other half over it. The top half cracked down the middle.
Oops.
Hm. Well... Guess I'll just frost over it?
It cracked more, a huge yawning fissure all the way across. Well. Okay. Time to resort to the philosophy of Anything with This Much Chocolate Cannot Be a Bad Thing. Pretend it's not there. Proceed as normal. More fudge frosting. STAT.
The Huge Gaping Maw of Death was resistant to my cosmetic attempts, however. This was no tiny blemish. This was a natural disaster. Do not build your dessert on a faultline or your end result will be Earthquake Cake.
Ignore it and it will go away. Ahem. I took out the red icing and chocolates, edged the cake, then attempted to write "Happy Birthday Morgan" in cursive icing. Over to one side of the cleft. Kinda scrunched up like. It was at this point that I realized that I do not have a promising future as a cake decorator as if that were not already obvious. Sheesh.
I fixed the shaky broken letters as much as I could and then looked at the wreck of a cake. Then smiled. Then laughed. I ran to the back bedroom, dug around in some boxes and pulled out two Lego people. Perfect.
Morgan laughed and giggled when he came home and saw it. Earthquake cake indeed:
Only a Lego Man can fall into the Gaping Maw of Death and still be smiling:
Rose likes to help clean the candles:
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