High Plains Panhandler

Kindergarten Fabulosity

The other night at dinner I asked Alex how kindergarten was going. He thought for a second, put his fork down, draped his arm over the chair next to him, leaned backward and said, "Fabulous!"

Fabulous! Now that's the way to describe a kindergarten class.

Big Birthday Surprise

Suzanne had a Big Deal Birthday recently, so I thought I'd be clever and surprise her with a party. Since I'm no good with planning things like this (when I was a kid I thought a great idea for a party would be to cook Jiffy Pop popcorn over the stove with no cover on the Jiffy so popcorn would fly all over the place like confetti, and everyone would dance and sing under the rain of fluffy corn goodness - of course, I didn't realize then the poor party fun that would result from a burning popcorn kernel lodged in the eye) I hired a friend of ours who excels at things like this.

I talked over what I'd like to do with Katherine the Party Planner, which consisted of: no black balloons, no over-the-hill jokes, no dire colors. Instead I wanted something festive and thematic. She jumped on this and came up with the brilliant idea of having a 40-year old Girl Scout party (Suzanne, known far and wide and the Troop 24 Girl Scout Leader). Katherine had a beautiful and clever invitation created, which passed my rigorous and eagle-eyed inspection quickly. The only change I suggested was to remove the atrocity of multiple explanation marks. One exclamation mark is always sufficient. Two are indulgent. Three . . . well no sentence should ever end in a heart attack. Really!

I gathered up names for the invitation list and asked our friend Davide, who lives in New York, to make the cake. Davide bakes utterly astounding concoctions, and I knew it would mean quite a bit to Suzanne if Davide made the birthday centerpiece. (Of course, transportation of the cake pieces for final assembly in Amarillo was some grief, and the UPS guy didn't get the package to Katherine until the very last minute before the party, so I was a little nervous that afternoon, watching the flurry of e-mails between Katherine and Davide, but it all worked out and the cake, of course, was magnificent and short-lived, devoured in minutes.)

I didn't want to have the party at our house because it would have been impossible for a surprise, so our friend Ruth volunteered her place. My job was to get Suzanne there. Since her birthday was on a school night, I had to be especially tricky. Unfortunately, Suzanne knows a lot about my trickiness since in the past I've done all sorts of things to fool her about her presents. I knew this time if I said something about running by Ruth's because of some random reason, Suzanne would see right through that ruse. So I changed tactics.

I became pathetic.

I knew being the pathetic husband was the way to go, especially since I missed Suzanne's birthday last year because I was out of town for work. This year I was under threat of going out of town too, so I kept reminding her of that weeks before her birthday. Because of that, and because work had been particularly brutal and late-night filled for the previous week, I casually mentioned the night before her birthday that we could go to a nice dinner, just the two of us, for her birthday meal. She snorted at me and rejected my plan because getting a babysitter with a mere 24 hours advance notice was nearly impossible (not knowing I had already set up a babysitter weeks ago). Instead she suggested we all go to dinner to a kid-friendly place. So I shrugged and said okay.

The next morning, on her birthday, I took my time getting ready for work, and I missed seeing her and the kids leave for school (she walks them to school every morning). I dashed off to work and then came back home about an hour later, slinking inside and looking miserable and pathetic.

"Sorry I missed you this morning," I said, hands in my pockets and shoulders hitched. "So I thought I'd come back home and say happy birthday. Well, I'll see you later. After work I guess." (Friends were taking her to lunch, so I wouldn't see her until after work.) Then I shuffled off, trying to look like I was feeling pretty jerky.

As soon as I got home from work Suzanne said we'd leave for dinner in about ten minutes. This wasn't, of course, optimal for the party, which was supposed to start in about an hour and a half, but I had to go along with it. Ten minutes later, Suzanne told the kids to get their shoes on. I whispered to Alex: "hide!"

Alex hid in the family room, and then I made a big stink about not going to the restaurant unless we had all the kids. So then I stood up, indignant, and proclaimed that Suzanne and I were going to dinner by ourselves. Our reservations were at 7:15 (we were supposed to be at the party at 7:20), so she had a little more than an hour to get ready while I got the kids dinner.

The babysitter showed up at 7:00, and a few minutes later we were in the car, ready to go. Then I told Suzanne that I wanted her to wear a blindfold. At first she hesitated, but I explained that I had to get the dinner reservations at the last minute and all I had for a surprise was a blindfold. "Just go along with it," I pleaded. "I've got nothing else. Let's just make this as big a surprise as we can."

So she did it, and then I drove all over the place trying to fool her. I gave her one clue about the 'restaurant.' It was this: I've eaten there before. So she worked through that during the drive, trying to think of places I've eaten and she hadn't, which is what I had hoped she do (even though we had both eaten at Ruth's before, she assumed my clue meant only I had eaten at this mysterious place, even though I didn't exactly say that).

When we finally got to Ruth's house, I had to move fast because I feared she'd hear someone's sprinkler go off and know we were at a house and not a restaurant. It was a little tricky navigating the blindfolded birthday girl to the front door, and I had asked Katherine to have the door open when we got to the house so Suzanne wouldn't hear the awkward sound of a front door opening (actually, to make sure they saw us drive up to the house, I pulled up in the driveway and backed out several times, pretending I couldn't get into the restaurant's parking place correctly).

Well, it all ended great. At the last second, Suzanne took off her blindfold to a room full of her friends yelling "Happy Birthday!" And after that we had a great evening, full of catered food, drinks, presents, and a magical birthday cake.

I hope she was really surprised. But the great thing about Suzanne is even if she knew something was up, she wouldn't tell. And I guess, really, that's her present to all of us who put the party together: her look of surprise, her smile, her joy at being queen for the day.