Classic Rant #373 (November 11, 2010): Not Rejuvenated

Yesterday, I took the day off to be with my beautiful wife, who celebrated her birthday.

I won't tell you how old she is, but I will tell you that she looks like a woman about 10-15 years younger. (See her photos here. They aren't the best pictures I have taken of her, but they're the only ones I had handy. And yes, my son is in one of them.)

Yeah, if it sounds like I am bragging, I am.

She keeps herself in excellent shape, goes to the gym several times a week, watches what she eats, and well, she is good looking and has a great figure anyway, but she really watches herself.

You would think that I would be ready to go today, since I had the day off yesterday. You would think that I had new energy, new vitality, and that even though it was just one day, I would be electric today.

NOT!

Yesterday didn't go as I had planned it in my head, not by a long shot.

My wife took the say off like I did, and her car needed some work done on it, so I followed my better half to the service station. I told her to leave the car, when we were done with whatever we were going to do, we would pick it up.

I later found out that my mother was sick, or at least didn't feel like herself. My mother is the one in our family who has the energy of a person half her age, but she is approaching 80 years of age, so any sickness has to be taken as a warning flag of sorts.

My father was working yesterday. My mother wasn't up to taking herself to the doctor, so I had to do the job. Not that I minded--her health was the most important thing--but her doctor is about 30 miles away from where we are, close to the Nassau/Queens border in New York.

She made the appointment, and I took her there. She only has a bad cold, thank goodness, so I drove her home and she went to the pharmacy.

All the while my wife was sitting at home. Her car was done, but I couldn't take her to pick it up because I wasn't home.

I had told my wife earlier in the week that I wanted to take her out for brunch or lunch for her birthday, and she resisted. She said that she didn't want to go out.

Well, since we had to pick up the car, she finally agreed to go out. She picked Panera Bread, a place that really is for women. I don't know of any males who like this place, but hey, it was her birthday, so we ate there.

After we finished, I took her to get her car, we both drove home, and that was the end of that.

We watched "Judge Judy" together, which is about a step up from watching Jerry Springer. Not too romantic, and Judge Judy turns me off from my old Family Court days (I never had her as a judge, but I remember her.)

Before my son left for school in the morning, we gave my wife her gifts, but because of all the hub-bub yesterday, I made a major error:

I forgot to buy my wife a birthday cake!

I didn't realize this until after we ate dinner. She asked me, "Did you get a birthday cake?" and I must have turned every color in the spectrum (Roy G. Biv, yes, I still remember that).

I felt like a jerk. Everything else that happened made me completely forget the main course of a birthday--the cake!

She told me that rather than cake, she wanted ice cream, or more to the point, glace, which is less fattening. I went to a local place, picked it up for her and my son (not me, I had lost my appetite by that point), and gave it to her.

We sang happy birthday, and I swear that about a half hour after eating her glace, my wife fell asleep.

She has off today, so I won't see her at all until tonight, while I am laboring at work.

So yesterday didn't really go as planned at all.

Well, at least my mother is doing better.

However, I am not ...