Russ’ Pressure Filled Weekend

This is the time of the year Russ dreads. Our Anniversary was yesterday, my birthday today and Mother’s day is next Sunday. The pressure to impress, surprise, delight and satisfy me is all concentrated into an eight-day window. He worries, studies, researches, quizzes, plans, connives, and sometimes just asks me what I want for months in advance. If he gets it right he can coast along for a whole year basking in the joy he created, but if he gets it wrong it hangs over him like a dark Charlie Brown like rain cloud, much more worried about it than I ever was.

This year he thought he had it all locked down early. He woke up at 2:30 in the morning on April 10, the day the Apple Watch was being launched so he could order it at exactly 3:01 hoping he could get one in time for my birthday. Quickly he was notified that the combination of size, style and band he wanted was not going to be available for weeks and weeks. DRATS! Plot foiled and he lost a good night’s sleep.

To help him off the hook I told him that he did not have to do a thing for our anniversary since we were invited to a party. Now going to a party is not always Russ’ number one choice, but after the Apple Watch debacle he accepted the help.

Russ came home from a business trip Friday night sick as a dog. He says he caught it from the sick people in his DC office, but I think the stress of our anniversary and my birthday happening on a weekend added to his illness. I got up yesterday and went off to do a volunteer job I could not get out of and came home to find him feverish. Sad, sad I told him we were postponing celebrating our anniversary and I was canceling my birthday. As he lay delirious he had no choice but to agree.

I sent an e-mail of regret to the hosts of our “After the Derby” Party who don’t live far from our house. That night as I was taking Shay out while I was in my nightgown and fuzzy slippers I could hear the fun sounds coming from the party across the golf course. Sad, sad, come to find out today it was the most fun party to happen around here in years.

Carter feeling the weight of celebrating my birthday falling squarely on her shoulders woke up early for a teenager on a Sunday morning and brought me breakfast in bed—my regular Special K with the number “54” spelled out in dried cherries. There it was, my big weekend reduced to fiber and calcium, as it should be.

Now Russ is going to have a whole year of sorrow and regret that what is the two days of Dana did not live up to his well thought out plans. All I can say is thank goodness for Facebook and all the birthday well-wishers; otherwise this could have been a really horrible weekend. I really have no place to whine, I have a great family, a happy life, and everything anyone could ever wish for, especially a loving husband who worries much to much about these eight days, when all I need is for him to be well.