Wile E. Coyote. Super Genius.

I celebrated a milestone birthday this month and on the actual day of my birth I was in a BIG city celebrating the milestone birthday of my Metis Sister. I had a blast and when I get some pictures, I'll tell you all about it. Trust me, you don't want to miss the juicy details.

Anyhoo, I have been home, recovering from the fun and frivolity, for a week now and am just getting over the sleep deprivation and sore stomach muscles from laughing my ASS off with a bunch of crazy, booze soaked chicks.

I should have known something was up when the man offered me a sleep-in-day today. Offered it.
We don't do that. We typically use the sleep-in-day as currency to get other things we want from each other. We barter it, not offer it. That should have been clue #1.

Then when I got up this morning, he had been cleaning. Ya. Cleaning. Should have been clue #2.

I asked him why the phone was left in the bathroom, like he had been having a conversation that he didn't want to risk me overhearing and had inadvertently left the evidence of his sneakiness on the bathroom counter. He said he had been talking to my mom and that she was coming over on the afternoon. For those of you who are still counting, those are clue #'s 3 and 4.

I was a little freaked that my mom was coming over. It is a Saturday, after all. We RARELY EVER see her silver-headed self on weekends, especially the most hoarded of weekend days, Saturday! I started having paranoid thoughts, "Why is she coming here? It's Saturday, for god sakes! She never comes over on Saturday, even when we ask. Oh my god . . . somethings up. She's coming to deliver some kind of news. It must be bad if she has to come and deliver it in person on a Saturday."

As the morning continued, the Man kept suggesting that I have a shower. Every time I mentioned something I was going to do, like run the dishwasher, start some laundry, eat breakfast, he would say, "That sounds great. Why don't you have a shower first?" I finally relented and had a shower. I was in no condition to argue, what with my paranoid, angst-ridden brain swirling with worry about what bombshell my mom was coming over to lay on us. Besides that, I was all sweaty from walking back and forth to the calendar to confirm that it was, in fact, Saturday. Shower nagging = clue #5.

When I emerged from the shower, all dewey and angelic-looking (read: wet, wrinkly and water-logged) the girl was waiting for me with her finger pressed to her lips saying "Shhhhhh momma. It's your birfday." "My birfday?" I said, "What do you mean it's my birfday?" The Man, having overheard this exchange emerged from the shadows with a belated birthday card for me, decorated with stickers and pen scribbles, proclaiming his embarrassment over having not given me a card for my birthday. Ok. Clue #6. In my defense though, the girl, who is 2, still thinks it's Christmas. There is still snow, after all. So her whispered announcement of my birthday is truly not to be unexpected. A 2 year olds grasp of times and dates are relative. You gotta love them for that.

Then, a friend, who lives out in the boonies and "spends the whole damn week in town and sure as hell isn't going to come back in on my days off" shows up at my door, unannounced and unexpected (by me, anyway) with her 2 little girls in tow. "Hey!", I exclaim, "What the hell are you doing here?" To which she replies, "I had to make myself scarce at home. My dad is butchering pigs." Clue #7!!!

The alarm bells should have been ringing by this time because if you knew this friend of mine, you'd know that she is a mild-mannered, book-keeping, number-crunching accountant-type by day but when 5 o'clock rolls around she is a calf-pulling, chicken-butchering, butter tart baking bitch. She is a farmer trapped in an accountant's briefcase, she's a farm-case, a close relation of the nut-case. AND, as if I needed to provide MORE evidence of my dunce-ness, she could have been at home doing the GST for the farm, y'know, crunching numbers and shit, and instead she was IN TOWN. *shaking head* How could I have been so blind? Not to mention, and I really shouldn't mention this, her eldest innocently asked me, "Who else is coming?" Coming? Here? When? (What'cho talkin' bout, Willis?) *sigh* I'm thick sometimes. (I dare say, I am genical sometimes, but that's another topic for another day.)

Lastly, the Boy, who is on his bunk bed looking out his bedroom window, exclaims. "Mom! Someone else is here! Quick! Look! It's formerly-fat-Cousin-who-is-now-skinny and her husband and their kids!" (You remember my policy on names on my blog, right? I was going to call her kinda-fat Cousin but that seemed too passive aggressive, same with still-pretty-fat Cousin, so formerly-fat-Cousin-who-is-now-skinny will have to do for now, soon she shall be known as formerly-fat-Cousin-who-is-now-skinny-but not-as-skinny-as-me! Plus, I have height on my side. I'm taller than her by like 10 inches. She's quite . . . um . . . how do I say this nicely? . . . squat. Yeah, that's it. She's squatly. And, as if I need more on my side, I wear jealousy-green much better than she does.)

Anyway, I digress.

Remember a few posts ago I said that I'd cut it the hell out with the epic posts? Well, forget I said that.

Ok. Now I digress.

So, I answer the door and there they are, "What the hell are you doing here?", I ask. "Just visiting," replies the husband of my Cousin. "Happy Birthday!", Cousin exclaims thrusting a card (empty, without money in it, I will later find out) into my hand. "Thank you," I say, still completely oblivious, masterfully exhibiting my genetic connection to the "obliviatum dunder-head-ikus monkey", now long extinct.

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"Wait a minute . . . are you guys here for my birthday? Am I having a party?"

The lights go on, the proverbial lights not the real lights, (Wouldn't this have been sooooooooooooo much funnier had all of this transpired in the dark! The real dark, not the proverbial dark.) and I slowly come to the realization that my dear, sweet, shower-nagging husband has planned a surprise birthday party for me!!!! He even made extra sure not to let me be surprised in my grubby old pajamas with my hair sticking out in 16 different directions and remnants of yesterdays mascara still shadowing my blood-shot, bleary eyes! He tricked me into basking in the attention of my friends and family with a clean face, styled hair a shirt that was neither holey nor slept in. He SURPRISED me! He planned and orchestrated and had my mom bring 2 pans of the best damn Skor cheesecake this side of the alfalfa field! He loves me and I love him!

But if he ever fuckin' tricks me again, I'll kick his ass!