Mother’s Day 2009
Ξ June 27th, 2009 | → | ∇ The latest indignity |
Let’s start with Mother’s Day.
Ok, granted the exact date moves around from year to year, but basically everyone knows it’s in May. And everyone knows that May follows April, etc., etc.
So when asked, wait, no. Strike that. When I mentioned off-hand one day that I would really like to go to a Mother’s Day buffet, I thought my gift request was simple to understand and carry out. I wasn’t asking that the men of the house make me breakfast, buy me something extreme, or send them on some mythical quest to the unknown for the Holy Grail. It was, “Let’s do brunch”.
Before going much further, I should probably explain why brunch on Mother’s Day is a big deal. Normally, since moving to Pittsburgh, every Mother’s Day was spent running the Komen Race for the Cure 5K. While this is a great event and we would raise $1000 for the event, it also meant getting up at 4am, driving to Oakland, fighting other racers for parking, standing out in the chilly morning, running up and down some insane hills, becoming completely drenched in sweat, and fighting our way out of Oakland to drive back home. All of this feel good activity would occur right in the prime brunch hours. Paul and I would usually photograph a wedding the night before, getting to bed around 1am, which meant exhaustion as well. And those who have met me know that I am not a runner. I hate it. But this is one event where I will run, even while cursing under my breath the people who invented asphalt and the ancient geologic forces that shaped the Pittsburgh terrain. I ran this event for 7 years straight, even one year when I flew in from San Francisco the night before.
So last year Paul begged me not to sign us up for the Komen if we had a wedding the night before. Something about his body being old, beat up, blah blah blah. Ok, I agreed.
Enter 2009. Wedding scheduled for May 10th. No Komen race to be run. I decided that brunch would be a nice, nice, nice thing since I didn’t get to do Mother’s Day brunch any other year.
What could be easier?
As Paul found out, making Mother’s Day brunch reservations tends to not be a cake walk if you try to make them 4 days before the blessed Sunday event…
Who knew that other families would be taking THEIR moms out for breakfast as well? Come on, brunch with Mom? This had to be some novel idea that no one else would do on Mother’s Day!
So instead of having brunch out, I ended up making my own breakfast because the guys were too tied up in their own thing to get out a mixing bowl and spatula. My son did go out and get me a card and a Barnes & Noble gift card. That was nice.
Paul, however, seemed to think that picking up the phone and attempting to make reservations constituted the whole of his effort. So when I asked him if I could have my MD card, he was stunned that I would want one. Instead, his MD present to me was making the bed and doing the dishes. Wow. What a keeper. Two things he does anyways.
To redeem himself, on May 23rd he ran out and bought a birthday card for me. By crossing out all the “birthday” and hand writing in “Mother’s Day”, he felt this was acceptable to make me feel exhaulted and appreciated.
Hands off, ladies. He’s all mine.