My Birthday, last part

I say that because birthdays are parties, or at least thought of to be or have parties, and if there was a party on that day, it was waiting for me at his house.

Sandy had had a rough day. He’d woken up with the birds that morning, flew out for a business trip consisting of site visits on what was so far the hottest day of the year, flew back, and was upstairs in the shower when I arrived.

I walked into the house carrying my overnight bag and a bottle of sparkling French lemonade for later, which I’ve decided to make a birthday tradition. I walked into the kitchen to put the bottle in the fridge and saw, on the counter, a bouquet of a dozen white roses, and a yellow envelope leaning against the tissue and cellophane they were wrapped in.

Maybe I should have waited, but the giddiness bubbling inside me was too strong, and the smile on my face too big. I took the card out of the envelope but before I’d had a chance to read it properly some rectangular beige papers fell out.

Stores call them love coupons, but no store was selling these. Knowing my perfectionist Sandy he’d made these himself, and a quick glance at the top one confirmed my theory. He didn’t just scrawl them on scraps either, he’d *designed* them on AutoCAD, used different colours and fonts, then printed them out on the finest quality stock.

Crazy, nutty, beautiful man. I got a massage, a movie, two date nights with the works, and a shopping trip this weekend to get me a GPS. He would have gotten me one already, he said, but wanted me to pick out my own so I’d be comfortable with it when driving.

Yes indeed, I am the luckiest girl in the world. And written inside the card, besides all that great stuff (that I won’t be sharing, thank you very much), he’d put down “Oh, you wait! I predict a very good year…”

Oh, I think so too. I also predicted a very good next half-hour, after I’d run pell-mell up the stairs to pull my man out of the shower and smother him with hugs and kisses.

After Sandy was dried & dressed, he took us out for dinner as per my birthday Rule #5: One Special Meal. I didn’t tell him or even ask him to do that, but he thinks one special meal is a great thing for birthdays, too. I’m glad we see eye to eye on so many things. “Your choice,” he told me, and even though we’ve already been there dozens of times I asked to go to our favourite sushi haunt. Sushi is great summer food and as any decent sushi freak knows, you can only go so long until withdrawal symptoms kick in.

We had our shrimp tempura, California rolls, spicy tuna hand rolls, salmon, white tuna & surf clam sashimi, and even shared a honking bowl of soba just for kicks. When we were thoroughly sushi-ed out we got back into the car and back to his place, where he had more waiting for me.

My Rule #6 for birthdays, the last one, is that You are the Celebration of your Life. It is very important for us to celebrate ourselves, particularly on these special days, for the ups and downs of the year gone by, and the hopes and dreams for tomorrow.

Then again, how nice is it when someone else sees something special, and creates a celebration for you?

Sandy sat me down on the floor at his coffee table (where we usually eat dinner) and made me promise not to look. Next thing I know, all the lights are off and he’s approaching with a mini chocolate vanilla swirl cheesecake, covered in more chocolate and strawberries and alight with candles. He put the cake in front of me, sang the birthday anthem, and took the obligatory picture of me blowing out the candles, cheeks puffed out as if I were storing nuts for the winter.

I think the last picture I have of me in that pose was from my eighth birthday party. “Did you make a wish?” he said, after flicking the lights back on, and while I told him Yes, I don’t think special wishes are required ever since we found each other again.

While I was cutting the cake, Sandy ran back into the kitchen for yet more surprises: cannoli and sfogliatelle. Damn those Italians and their suberb pastries. We all know cannoli as those delectable crunchy tubes filled with sweetened ricotta, used by Talia Shire to bring about a fellow mobster’s demise in Godfather III.

Sandy knows they’re my favourite, but he also wanted me to try the sfo-lyah-tel-e, which look like clams, and are filled with flavoured ricotta. Move over, cannoli. And, a few laughs on the side. It turns out that before Sandy and I eat any pastry, we do the exact same thing: shake off the icing sugar.

It was late by then, Sandy was nodding off from his long day, and I was looking forward to some sleep myself… afterwards. Later on in his room, as we lay there enjoying the breeze from his ceiling fan being set to High, Sandy turned to me and asked, “Did you have a good birthday, Cheech?”

No no no. Not good. Not good at all. The best.