40 years and counting (or, can I get 20% off my age?)
It's my 40th birthday!
I'm going to stick with the high points, because I could very easily slide in the other direction; perhaps I'll save that for the weekend. (For the record, it's all ruminations on life, not sucky things that happened today.) But, as birthdays go, it wasn't too bad.
I woke up to cards, flowers, Burt's Bees lip gloss, and a puzzle. X + Y = C, with C being the amount on the checks from my parents. I didn't get that it was a legitimate math problem and my mother expected me to solve for C. It ended up being my birthdate plus my age, in some fashion, and apparently my parents came up with this last week while waiting for mom's colonoscopy. See, even more reason for dad to have taken her this year.
Work went well. I didn't expect it to be busy, which overall it wasn't, but we had a special event planned that helped make the workday go by faster. We also had a client pop in I wasn't expecting, and it was a pleasant surprise, plus she brought doughnuts. (She brings in *her* clients and feeds them, and leaves us the rest.) However, when it rains, it pours…my boss, I believe, had already gotten doughnuts, and I had brought in lemon squares, so you had no excuse to not be sugared up today at my job.
Dad had said to me the other day that we should go out for my birthday, so okay, fine. When I got home, I checked the menus for Chili's and TGI Friday's to see which looked better; Chili's it is. Except, when we got there, I swear to you it was like there were just three people total working--one host, one waitress, and the manager who might have been running the kitchen. The host was a teenage boy who never said anything about, sorry it's taking so long or anything like that. All I know is that it was 5:08 when we left the house, 5:14 when someone behind us checked their watch, and over an hour later when we finally got our food. There had been several parties in front of us when we arrived, and the guy directly in front of us said he was waiting in line just to give his name. (It ended up not being like the weekend--no names were ever taken. They probably weren't expecting it to be as busy as it was.) There was a larger party of six in front of him--and they had reservations at 5:15 (you can make reservations at Chili's?)--plus another group I think, and this group of three women I hadn't even seen off to the side on the benches. A family with two little girls appeared behind us, then someone else, and a few people came in and went off to the bar. We were all just standing and standing there for a while. Here's what got us: It was clear that the restaurant wasn't very busy. Many tables were empty. There was just the one kid greeting and seating everyone, and for whatever reason it was taking a long time.
When we finally got seated, the waitress greeted us somewhat quickly, and we wanted to be sure to get in our orders as soon as possible since it was clear it might take a while. I probably didn't help since I got ribs. But we talked and got mom laughing so hard at one point she thought she would pee, so at least we were entertaining ourselves. It had been about an hour after we were seated when the third person, we presume the manager, came out and apologized for the food taking so long, and he was going to take 20% off our bill for our patience. Oh, great. It was another 5-10 minutes before it came out, and dad's sandwich didn't come with his fries, and the manager said he'd bring them out, and we could have complimentary desserts. That's when mom mentioned it was my birthday, so he was all, you're definitely getting dessert! Well, none of us actually *wanted* dessert; I'd seen them online and as three of the four come with ice cream, I automatically would skip those, and the fourth is cheesecake, and I wasn't feeling that tonight (and hopefully grandma will pull through and bring Eli's tomorrow)--plus, I still had lemon bars at home if I wanted them. I'd brought about half to work and left half at home for the holiday, and most of the work bars returned home with me since most people went for the doughnuts. Oh well. We still had a good time and believe me, we'll laugh about this later. I mean, we were laughing about it as it was happening. We also decided my father is Grumpy Cat and now I'm determined to get him *something* Grumpy Cat for Christmas.
I got home to discover happy birthday/happy T-Day texts from Laura (my parents had also texted me earlier) and a birthday email from my California aunt, so as far as these things go, it was a pretty good birthday to vault me into the next age demographic. And, well, ten more years 'til AARP! …Oh, lord.
I'm going to stick with the high points, because I could very easily slide in the other direction; perhaps I'll save that for the weekend. (For the record, it's all ruminations on life, not sucky things that happened today.) But, as birthdays go, it wasn't too bad.
I woke up to cards, flowers, Burt's Bees lip gloss, and a puzzle. X + Y = C, with C being the amount on the checks from my parents. I didn't get that it was a legitimate math problem and my mother expected me to solve for C. It ended up being my birthdate plus my age, in some fashion, and apparently my parents came up with this last week while waiting for mom's colonoscopy. See, even more reason for dad to have taken her this year.
Work went well. I didn't expect it to be busy, which overall it wasn't, but we had a special event planned that helped make the workday go by faster. We also had a client pop in I wasn't expecting, and it was a pleasant surprise, plus she brought doughnuts. (She brings in *her* clients and feeds them, and leaves us the rest.) However, when it rains, it pours…my boss, I believe, had already gotten doughnuts, and I had brought in lemon squares, so you had no excuse to not be sugared up today at my job.
Dad had said to me the other day that we should go out for my birthday, so okay, fine. When I got home, I checked the menus for Chili's and TGI Friday's to see which looked better; Chili's it is. Except, when we got there, I swear to you it was like there were just three people total working--one host, one waitress, and the manager who might have been running the kitchen. The host was a teenage boy who never said anything about, sorry it's taking so long or anything like that. All I know is that it was 5:08 when we left the house, 5:14 when someone behind us checked their watch, and over an hour later when we finally got our food. There had been several parties in front of us when we arrived, and the guy directly in front of us said he was waiting in line just to give his name. (It ended up not being like the weekend--no names were ever taken. They probably weren't expecting it to be as busy as it was.) There was a larger party of six in front of him--and they had reservations at 5:15 (you can make reservations at Chili's?)--plus another group I think, and this group of three women I hadn't even seen off to the side on the benches. A family with two little girls appeared behind us, then someone else, and a few people came in and went off to the bar. We were all just standing and standing there for a while. Here's what got us: It was clear that the restaurant wasn't very busy. Many tables were empty. There was just the one kid greeting and seating everyone, and for whatever reason it was taking a long time.
When we finally got seated, the waitress greeted us somewhat quickly, and we wanted to be sure to get in our orders as soon as possible since it was clear it might take a while. I probably didn't help since I got ribs. But we talked and got mom laughing so hard at one point she thought she would pee, so at least we were entertaining ourselves. It had been about an hour after we were seated when the third person, we presume the manager, came out and apologized for the food taking so long, and he was going to take 20% off our bill for our patience. Oh, great. It was another 5-10 minutes before it came out, and dad's sandwich didn't come with his fries, and the manager said he'd bring them out, and we could have complimentary desserts. That's when mom mentioned it was my birthday, so he was all, you're definitely getting dessert! Well, none of us actually *wanted* dessert; I'd seen them online and as three of the four come with ice cream, I automatically would skip those, and the fourth is cheesecake, and I wasn't feeling that tonight (and hopefully grandma will pull through and bring Eli's tomorrow)--plus, I still had lemon bars at home if I wanted them. I'd brought about half to work and left half at home for the holiday, and most of the work bars returned home with me since most people went for the doughnuts. Oh well. We still had a good time and believe me, we'll laugh about this later. I mean, we were laughing about it as it was happening. We also decided my father is Grumpy Cat and now I'm determined to get him *something* Grumpy Cat for Christmas.
I got home to discover happy birthday/happy T-Day texts from Laura (my parents had also texted me earlier) and a birthday email from my California aunt, so as far as these things go, it was a pretty good birthday to vault me into the next age demographic. And, well, ten more years 'til AARP! …Oh, lord.