More birthday

I thought my early surprise party was all I would be doing for my birthday, but I was wrong.

This past weekend, I had two, count 'em, two more surprise parties.

Jeff told me to be ready at 11:30 a.m. Saturday. And since Jeff doesn't usually make plans, I was ready to go right on time.

We got into the Barracuda and started driving. And I started guessing.

"Are we going to the farmers' market?" I asked Jeff.

"Nope," he said.

"Are we going somewhere shopping?" I asked him.

"Nope," he said.

I asked Biscuit, "Do YOU know where we're going?"

And in Jeff's tone of voice, he said, "Nope."

That was no help!

Then we pulled into the parking lot of a movie theater.

"We're going to see a movie!" I said, but Jeff didn't agree or disagree.

He drove up and down a couple of aisles like he was looking for a parking space. Then he said, "Psych!" and drove back out onto the main street of the shopping center.

Then we pulled into a restaurant parking lot. I didn't get excited because I figured he's just say "Psych!" again and pull out.

But he didn't. He parked.

We walked in, and the hostess asked if she could help us. I said, "Three, please." But then Jeff walked away.

"Where did Dad go?" I asked Biscuit.

"I don't know," Biscuit said.

I looked back at the hostess and said, "Is something going on?"

Well, she is a very bad liar because her eyes started shifting around, and she just completely ignored the question.

A different hostess came up and said, "This way."

Meanwhile, Jeff was still missing.

I was behind the hostess, and Biscuit was behind me. We were walking into the dining room, and she just stopped. We stopped behind her and just stood there. I wondered if she forgot where she was taking us.

I noticed her looking to the side, and as soon as I looked, a bunch of people yelled, "SURPRISE!"

I was looking down the row of people and saw my family. "What are y'all doing here?" I asked. 

Then I kept going down the line and saw one of my friends who lives several states away. She had flown in just for the weekend. "What are YOU doing here?" I asked her. I was so surprised.

Two of my friends (let's call the H and J) had gotten in touch with my brother to plan the whole thing. And I had no idea.

We had a nice lunch, and it was really good to visit with everybody.

My black graveyard cake! My sister-in-law's friend made the yummy cake. And I'm pretty sure the idea for it was my brother's.

H and J came to our house after lunch to hang out for a while. It was nice to wind down a bit after the surprise lunch.

We already had plans for dinner with H and her husband. She had mentioned something about a surprise, but after lunch, I just thought she meant that J would be joining us.

But as we walked into the restaurant, a bunch of my other friends were waiting on a table. Surprise party No. 3!

My cake was lemon raspberry. It was especially sweet because H doesn't even like raspberry, and she paid for half the cake. She assumed (rightly so) that Biscuit wouldn't like lemon raspberry, either, so she got chocolate cupcakes for herself and Biscuit.

So I ended up with three surprise parties and four cakes - a homemade chocolate eclair cake from Mama, a red velvet cake from my boss/friend at work, the funny yet tasty graveyard cake and the beautiful lemon raspberry cake.

My boss/friend hung a banner, got a balloon and brought me a red velvet cake.

Mama laughed at me when I talked to her Sunday. I admitted to her that I cried after each party Saturday.

I'm really good in a crisis. The drama doesn't hit me until after everything settles down. And that's what happened Saturday. I just couldn't believe all these people went to such trouble for me.

"It only gets worse from here," Mama said. "You'll just cry over anything."

And once again, she was right.