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May 18, 2007

Worst. Wife. Ever.

That would be me.

Why should I deserve such a title, you ask? Lemme 'splain.

Today is David's 40th birthday.

He's been out of town all week, so we've been chatting on the phone every so often. When he travels, I make him call me from every airport. Just so I can stop worrying for roughly two minutes that I'll never get to see him again. Today is no exception. He's on his way home today, and he called me around 8am from Minneapolis while waiting for his flight to Spoke.

We had a nice and silly conversation and hung up. I went about my business, getting breakfast made, cleaning up after myself, doing some other stuff, and all of a sudden, I had a text on my phone. It read,

"Happy birthday to me?"

At which point I realized I HAD FORGOTTEN TO WISH MY HUSBAND A HAPPY BIRTHDAY. ON HIS 4OTH. Because, as I said, I am the Worst Wife Ever.

This is not something you recover from. I cannot believe I actually forgot to wish him a happy birthday. Mind you, if he'd been here, I would have wished him happy the minute he woke up. I hadn't yet put "Friday, May 18th is Dave's birthday" and "today" together, because, I think, I was kind of thinking of his birthday as starting once he gets home from the trip.

Which should happen any minute now. (I had to hide all the presents because I wasn't done wrapping them, so I'm sitting here writing and trying to look all nonchalant for when he walks in the door and gets nailed in the face with streamers. Because they're taped to the doorframe.) Though I suppose I could clean the living room. It's pretty much a disaster area. As is my office.

I should mention that the moment I read the text message, I called him. He answered and I said, "Happy Birthday!?!?" (in exactly that tone of voice). And then I took a page out of my friend Nancy's book. Nancy & I went to high school together, along with our friend Karma. Karma's birthay is at the beginning of January. Nancy's is in April. So every year, on Karma's birthday, Nancy calls her. And says, not "Happy Birthday!" not "Congratulations!" but "How is it?" in this concerned and worried sort of voice, as though Karma's recovering from elective heart surgery or something. It's hilarious. To me, anyway.

So that's what I said to Dave, "How is it?" Since, after all, my turn is less than four months away at this point and I thought it might be good information to have. And he said, "Actually, I can't tell you. It's not allowed. I got a phone call this morning, giving me all kinds of interesting information, and one of the things they told me was, 'you can't pass this along to anyone who's not 40 yet.' So you'll just have to wait."

Funny, funny man, my husband.

Only now? I'm curious.

Posted by sally at May 18, 2007 01:30 PM

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