A so-called surprise & sassy shots

God I despise Mondays. :::BLARGH!:::

Last night was my hubby’s ‘surprise’ party. The reason why I put ‘surprise’ into quotes is because it was only a partial surprise. S-II and I were planning to pull together a group of friends and family to celebrate my husband’s birthday. I trawled his facebook profile for people I thought he might like to see there, and sent out the requisite invitations, including one to his mother and family. Hubby’s never had a surprise party and I thought it would be effing brilliant to have our tiny house stuffed to the seams with happy people yelling SURPRISE!

Unfortunately, his mother only set up the Facebook account so they could play something called ‘Farkle’, and then promptly disregarded the account… so they did not read the Facebook message invitation. So the weekend before last, while we toiled among estate-sale goers, my hubby got a phone call from his mom telling him what they had planned for his birthday—which was their usual combination birthday with his nephew at his sibling’s house that they do every year. I was presented with a pickle… I couldn’t say “NO! I planned something already god damnit!” to him, because it would ruin the surprise. I was pretty pissed. Then to top it off, the planned estate sale for this last weekend was put off because there were weddings and showers and other things family members needed to attend; so my built-in hubby-distracter was not there any more so S-II and I could stealth around and make preparations. I was doubly pissed.

So I invented some malarkey and told hubby “I don’t know why she’s inviting you over… I sent them an invitation to dinner at our house, which was supposed to be a surprise, which is now ruined.” He wondered why they never answered my invitation, discovered that they didn’t read their FB mail, so I eventually was able to pass the invitation along… So the plan was, combo birthday at sibling’s house at 3PM… secret party at home, 6PM… Hubby would just think mom & her significant other would just follow him up the mountain for a nice sedate dinner. It worked out pretty decently too because he was out of the house most of the afternoon, and left just as S-II and I were making preparations, so he had no idea what was in store food wise.

Of course, to throw a huge monkey wrench into everything as usual, the all-too-predictable re-admittance of my mother to the hospital occurred on Saturday as it was expected at any point. Her lack-of-taking-her-required-medication led to the inevitable, and she is now at present hospitalized until further notice and surgery. She could have had that surgery much earlier, and much more safely had she followed her doctor’s instructions about taking her medication, and followed up as requested, but the gall-bladder issue has escalated, and she is still a high-risk surgery because her heart-rate is so high, but now there is no choice. Surgery it is. Tomorrow. I asked if they could perform an EvilSelfishCrone-ectomy while they had her under… but they said not at this time since she is already high-risk for surgery. The funny and sad thing is; the Doctor, and all her nurses have made mention of her ‘bellicose’ and ‘difficult’ manners. Her doctor complained to me yesterday that she keeps getting up and moving all over the place… he is diplomatic “It’s a good sign, at least… even if she disconnected her potassium and let it pool onto the floor while she wandered the hallway… she’s active…”

Because of her being admitted, attending the ORS dance assembly that night was not an option… We both gave up that day in order to be there for her self-created crisis—and all she did was act spiteful and defensive and totally impossible the whole time we were there. “Well… if I get visits like *this* maybe they should just LET me die…” she exclaimed after I grumbled at her to stop taking off the compression things on her legs and disconnecting the IV. She kept trying to tear out her IV the whole time too… I’m like “Stop that Mom!” --- “I *have* to, look!” shows us a dangling piece of tubing taped to her arm… “they keep poking holes in me…”---“Mom, they will just poke more holes in you again if you rip off your IV… Knock it off!”—“Stop f***ing telling me what to do, god damnit!” I know this sounds evil, but I thought; I don’t care if she rips out her IV and bleeds to death tonight… I am not canceling the ‘surprise’ party for hubby. NOT happening.

Sunday morning I slept in a smidge, and then hubby and I cleaned up the tiny abode a bit in preparation for the ‘dinner’. He took off about an hour after S-II arrived, and we spent most of the early afternoon in the kitchen wearing June Cleaver aprons and stirring sauces, filling pastry puffs and popping ‘broken/ruined/extra’ things into our mouths as we went along. It was seriously fun, despite the sore feet and the phonecalls to the hospital to hear the doctor mention what a hellacious pain in the ass my mother is being to everyone there.

Raspberry Lemon tartlets. ::mmm::

Chocolate ganache cupcakes of death.

Strawberry and chocolate ganache pastry puffs of goodness.

My sideboard overfloweth with hors d'œuvres.

Come 5:50, the sideboard was overflowing with goodies… deviled eggs, stuffed ‘shrooms, raspberry and strawberry pastry confections, mini-quiches, decadent chocolate cupcakes with ganache frosting and raspberries and puffs with nummy cream-cheesy filling. PLUS we had two types of pasta sauce going for pasta and salad and S-II cracked out four loaves of fresh bread.

The best part was hubby finally coming home. He did spy an ex-work friend driving there, and so the jig was up… but when he walked in and saw his old school-friend and had a chance to spend time with old work-buddies too, he was happy. He kept saying he didn’t deserve it… LOL. S-II did a bang-up job and I’m proud to call her my friend.

Oh, and speaking of S-II, this unconventional creature has created a new blog called Sassy Shots… The premise of this blog is to post images taken to a particular theme. Each month, Sassy S-II will post the month’s daily shot theme list… challenging readers to submit their own interpretation of each daily theme. She then posts the pictures people take for that day. Check it out: http://sassyshot.blogspot.com/. You should try it. It’s fun (even though my photo-taking is pretty lame…) :). The original theme list for October is here. Today’s photo theme is HEAT… I was literal in my interpretation, since our office heating system is dead, I took a photo of the little radiant heater I have next to my desk. But poetic license is encouraged… I like my goldfish picture the best. Stephie-II’s pictures are usually very pretty, and so are Charlotte’s.