It's virtually impossible to keep a surprise party a surprise when the recipient of the party lives on the premises and gets off work in the early afternoon. In this case, I didn't make a big deal out of what I was preparing, but I didn't try to go out of my way to hide it either. I knew preparing for the Mr's early birthday dinner with the gang tonight would be enough work without sneaking around too. I calmly waited until he left for the college to go grocery shopping, and I was in the process of browning beef for the main course when he got home. I enlisted his help in pulling out my heavy stand mixer, and handed him a spatula and the bowl when I was done filling the cake pan. ("Batter? Why do we have batter?" he asked.) On my daughter's suggestion, I made one of his favorite foods from when the kids were little: stewed monkey brains (more accurately known as stuffed peppers), and angel food cake, which his family served at every single birthday gathering as long as his mother was alive, and for quite a few years after she died. I also got him rocky road ice cream, which has an inside-joke reference for three of us who were in attendance tonight. (Suffice it to say that a rocky road beer float is NOT a good idea. We confirmed that when all three of us shared an apartment in Boulder in the 80s.)
He's been working way too hard for months, and admitted he is only vaguely aware of the progression of the calendar year. He really wasn't sure which day of the week his birthday was on, and kept forgetting that it was this week at all. If we hadn't taken the time to acknowledge it tonight, he might not have given us another opportunity.
It seems apparent that all of us wanted him to spend more time playing, as most of our gifts were either games or game-adjacent. Let's all hope that he's able to spend more quality time in leisure pursuits in the coming year. For that matter, I would like that for all of us. It sounds much more appealing than the alternatives.
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