Catherine's Birthday Gift Debacle!

Last Wednesday was the day of Catherine's birth. With the magazine's quickly approaching deadline Catherine could not get away for a birthday celebration. We ended up having a rather quite evening at home. But while Catherine was working during the day, I was busy trying to get things together for her birthday.

First the cake.

Catherine's has one of the most amazing birthday cake recipes in the world. It is delicious. It is filled with extracts and a few little extras that just put it over the edge. I will also say that Catherine is the only one that can make it. She is the dessert queen. I normally cook everything else, but when it comes to desserts I just let her handle it.

But, who can ask someone to bake a cake for their very own birthday. Not me! So I took on the daunting task of trying to recreate this sacred cake.

Everything was going according to plan. The batter tasted wonderful, and it came out of the oven just perfectly. I took the cake into Catherine's office to show off my recent handy work. I was like a little kid that just made a tank out of Lego's and wanted to take it to their parents to seek praise. Catherine commended me on my cake and I headed back to the kitchen.

Normally I am pretty sure footed, but for some reason I stumbled. I caught myself on the island in the kitchen and kind of threw the cake pan onto the island as well. Wouldn't you know it as I flung the cake pan onto the island the cake separated from the pan and got a little air underneath it. It landed back into the pan, but in about 5 big pieces. After the idea of calling the local baker to order a replacement, I got the genius idea that I would just put it back together and when I iced the cake, no one could tell that it wasn't one solid piece underneath. So that was the plan. I made the icing, slathered it on top of the cake, wrote "Happy Birthday," and put it back into the fridge to get ice cold.

I went on about my duties and then I heard Catherine get into the fridge. I thought she would see the final product and praise me for my extreme confectionery talent. Not so much. This is what she said. "Luke, did something happen to my cake?" I thought there is no way she could tell what happened and went to investigate why she asked such a question.

Upon entering the kitchen, I could see it. It icing had settled into the cracks and the top of the cake looked like the Mojave desert with cracks in it 3 feet deep. Damn! I thought that my patchwork would be fool proof, but I guess it wasn't.

In efforts to take the spotlight off the botched birthday cake, I thought that I would order some flowers to be delivered to the house. After all, what girl doesn't like flower. I knew this would go smoothly. Or so I thought.

I went into the office and found some flowers online and ordered them. Catherine was oblivious to what I was doing. So I ordered the flowers and went back to completing my original birthday present, cleaning the house. (Needless to say, Catherine will not be getting that present again!)

I was Pledging the dining room table and heard my wife bust into boisterous laughter. Great, what now, I thought to myself. Then another question was asked by Catherine. "Luke, did you order me some flowers?" I was thinking that the florist already called and asked if someone would be around to deliver the arrangement. I played it cool and said "No, why?" Thinking I would really be Rico Suave and hold out until the flowers got here and she read the card.

"Well I just got a confirmation to a flower order that was just placed by you."

WHAT!!!!! How could this have happened! As luck would have it, when I entered the contact information, I somehow put in Catherine's email by mistake. So my surprise was blown.

Well I thought, oh well we will get the flowers and it was a nice gesture anyway. That is when the phone rang. It was the florist saying that they could not deliver the flowers until tomorrow. I responded with "Are you kidding me?" They weren't so the flowers were delivered the next day.

Just when I thought that all the birthday bloopers and blunders were over, they flowers arrived and were nothing like what I ordered. I ordered Dahlias and got Spider Mums. The arrangement was supposed to be big, the one I got was the size of my first. At this point my mojo was gone and I just hung my head, extended my arm with the flowers to Catherine, and walked into the other room.

Then I took a picture of the stupid flowers to send in with my complaint to the florist. I haven't heard back.



Here are those stupid flowers!



So I am just going to go out and sit by the fire pit and watch the cows walk by as they casually eat the fresh grass growth. Maybe I should let them take care of the birthday events next year. At least I have a year to plan for the next one.