Operation Birthday Surprise

Well, yesterday was Jimmy's monumental 40th birthday.

I have fretted over birthday parties and gifts because this is a big one, you know? I thought about having a party here but it seemed a little awkward and imposing to invite people we've only known for a couple months to a birthday party where they feel obliged to buy a present. Plus Jimmy has way less social interaction with people since he's at work all day and I am a lady o' leisure with time to spend with my gal pals, so it would have been a party with my friends and their husbands who we may or may not even really know.

So I thought to myself, "I need to import a friend for the birthday", and who else could I import but Jimmy's very best friend since early childhood, Stephen. This has been in the works for a couple weeks and I've been fraught with anxiety over every step of the way. Jimmy's been suspicious and has questioned everything after I told him a surprise was showing up on his birthday, which just made me more nervous.

The final leg of anxiety came about yesterday when I had to figure out how to keep us awake until the expected arrival time of 10:30pm. We're early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of folks around here, so 10:30 is a stretch on a school night.

I told Jimmy yesterday morning over this yummy breakfastthat the surprise was being delivered to his office. He didn't have to be there to receive it, but somebody in his office could sign for it.

Around midday, Stephen and his wife Lisa (who decided to come after we had Stephen's ticket) called Jimmy from the Charlotte airport before they boarded the plane to wish him a happy birthday. Jimmy asked him if it was a "local call" because he fully expected Stephen to walk into his office right then. Stephen told him he was crazy and that he was in some sort of work training. Close call.

I called Jimmy a couple more times in the afternoon to see if the surprise had shown up, but miraculously it had not.

Then he called me to say he was leaving work a few minutes early. Well that meant I had a reason to call the alleged delivery company to change the delivery address from the embassy to our home address." Well then, wouldn't you know that I got an email from the "delivery company" after this perfect-for-an-American-Autumn-birthday dinner that said there had been a mistake and that the motorcycle delivery guy for the embassy's location was different from the one in our neighborhood and they weren't going to be able to meet to hand over the surprise so the surprise wasn't coming until tomorow. I pretended to be very upset and disappointed over this and because of my fine acting skills, Jimmy bought it.

(I did all this because I knew there was no way I could keep us up until 10:30 under any seemingly normal pretense. We are in bed by 9pm on weeknights so what in the world could I do to justify 10:30?? I decided it was better just to go to sleep and wake up when they got here.)

I hired a driver to pick up Stephen and Lisa and he was supposed to call me when they were 10 minutes away from the apartment. I knew the plane was supposed to land around 9pm and by the time they cleared customs and immigration and drove home, I thought the best case scenario would be a 10:15 arrival.

Jimmy and I were in bed reading (me) and watching tv (him) until I thought my eyelids would snap shut permanently. Finally at 10:00pm (which is ridiculously late for me), I went to use the bathroom and check email on my phone in case the driver emailed me with an update. I had made it very clear that this was a surprise and he was not to call the house phone under any circumstance. Well, as my luck would have it, he called me on my cell phone while I was using the bathroom to tell me that they were 18-20 minutes away.

I went back to the bedroom, and Jimmy, with a bewildered expression, asked who I was talking to in the bathroom (this is an abnormality as I never even bring my cell phone upstairs). So I used my most exasperated voice and told him that he had to get dressed because the stupid surprise was being delivered now, that only in Colombia would they think it acceptable to bother people at 10:30 at night for a delivery that was supposed to come during the day, blah, blah, blah. Again, it was another award-worthy performance if I do say so myself!

So we went downstairs and waited and here you have it in photos!





We're sharing a wonderful weekend before they return home on Sunday. More to come!