Happy Birthday, Mom!

I'm waiting for the phone call. I'm betting I have at least an hour or so before it comes.

It will be the phone call where there is no hello, just a "What did you do?!" followed by the insistence that I wasn't supposed to buy anything for her birthday. Yes, that call will inevitably come from my mother. What I can't decide is whether or not she will have opened it before she calls. I "stealthed" the wrapped present into the house last night after adventures in grocery shopping. I set it up on the buffet in the dining room before I left this morning. (You have to walk right past it to get to the kitchen, so it's not likely to go unnoticed very long.)

The mother is tricky that way. She is worse than any kid ever dare be once she spies a package, yet she will deny, deny, deny. Then she'll say she "guessed" what it was. Uh-huh. I'm sure seeing the label after you coyly untaped a corner of the gift wrap didn't have anything to do with that. :-) I can't imagine how my grandmother ever kept anything hidden for Christmas!

My godmother called me yesterday to tell me that my godfather, the master baker, had baked a cake for her. The timing was awesome because I was just bumming over not having gotten her a cake. (The mother is a bakery elitist, a gene I inherited to some degree. Our long-time bakery, where almost every birthday cake I ever had in my whole life came from, where French breads, Christmas breads and oh, so delightful pastries came from, went out of business a year or so ago.) The trouble is that the cake is now 35 miles away! I was going to go there straight from here but she won't be home for me to pick it up. Looks like this is a tomorrow adventure, so the mother gets a birthday weekend!

The sun is just starting to come up now and so my day begins. But I'm out of here at noon! (Mumbling to self about vacation day that had been on books for three months. Reminding self that it is very good to be employed and to be really busy again.)