~ given eyes to see : : personal journal, blog, photography (winter 2006)

Love's Birthday Weekend Recap
Friday Dinner went great! I was so happy. I was so stressed that day, wanting to make sure everything was right and good and everyone had a nice time, etc. I was worried about how it'd come out making a full lasagna plus a small, meatless one for my mom. Would I compensate correctly for the extra ingredient requirements? Would it taste ok? How should I adjust the cook time? But, I'm happy to say, I estimated perfectly. I had just enough meat sauce for the full one and just enough meatless sauce for my mom's. Plus, enough cheese and noodles. It worked out pretty much exact. Everything cooked nicely and everyone loved the meal. (I must admit, I'm damned proud of my lasagna skills. I may not use a complex recipe, but everyone tends to really enjoy it.) And, after over eight years, my mom and Love's parents finally got to meet. Just one of those things where it never happened yet. We'd see one or the other, but never at the same time. So they got along nicely and a great meal was had by all. Love was really happy that I did that for him. Said no one ever has done that before. Sure, we've taken him out and such, but not the whole quasi-surprise dinner with everyone in attendance.

What's funny is I realized what the cause of the stress was after the fact. It dawned on me that no matter how progressive or modern you are, there's something deeply rooted about the need to provide a good meal to family; to be able to be a successful hostess. It's all tied up somehow with your value as a woman. Not your entire value, but definitely a component of it. I'm not a barefoot-and-pregnant mindset kinda woman, and yet....somewhere at the core, you still realize there's something intrinsically important about being able to pull off a meal like this successfully. It really gave me quite a warm, fuzzy kind of pride to see everyone have a nice time and know that I managed to make it all mesh and look flawless and easy.

Saturday Love's birthday weekend continued as we decided to go to the Magic Kingdom at WDW. Our friend Rand had me call around on Thursday and see if there were any open dinning reservations for the day. He wanted to take us out in thanks for watching his kitties (and feeding his mom's too) anyway, so it seemed like a perfect tie-in for the day. I got reservations at a place called, "The Crystal Palace" which is a "buffet with character." Meaning, Winnie the Pooh and Friends make the rounds inside the restaurant and you can get autographs and your picture taken and such with all of them. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet and I booked it (a) it seemed fun (b) like something all three of us would enjoy food-wise and (c) because getting any reservation two days out is near impossible. I was lucky to get it. I was a little worried since of course, the character meals tend to be more kid and family oriented, but I though, heck, it's Disney afterall. The whole place is more kid/family oriented!

They had Mickey-ear confetti and a curly streamer on the table for Love when we were seated. And despite my fears, it wasn't anywhere near as loud or crazy as I thought it could be. In fact, it was no different than any other dinning location in terms of noise and kids at the park. We mowed through a ton of food and dessert and man, it was all nummy. Good time. Love was totally surprised. He had no idea we put in the reservation. Tigger even came by special and they brought a cupcake with candle and sang, "Happy Birthday" to him. Gave him a card too with all the characters signatures within. Too cute. So we got our pics taken with Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet. I'm not typing this up at home, so I'll post them later.)

After lunch, we wandered around in an unbelievably overcrowded Magic Kingdom and called it a night around 10:30pm or so. It was pretty cold all day. We had an unprecedented 3-4 days of really cold weather. (A normal cold front is here and gone in a day typically.) May not be cold to some of you, but walking around Disney in 40-something degree weather is cold for me!

Sunday was Love's actual birthday. We had to run some errands though since we didn't get them down Saturday. Kitties need food for example, birthday or no birthday! :) Still though, it was a simple day, and we had some leftover lasagna for dinner and some leftover birthday cake.

Today, Monday I'm over at Rand's house waiting on UPS. See, Rand and I went in together on a gift for Love and due to the shitty weather up north, the delivery was delayed. It was supposed to arrive Friday. But now, it's set to arrive today. Rand of course is at work, so there's no one here to sign for the package. And Love's getting damned antsy about getting it. Heh. (He keeps asking if he can at least know what it is and I keep telling him no. He's worse than a little kid.) Hopefully it'll arrive soon since I've got to leave here to pick Rand up at work at 5pm. Sucks waiting and not knowing when something is going to arrive. And I don't want to listen to more of Love grump that it's not here yet!

Alright, I've got to close this up. His keyboard takes a lot more force to type and it's absolutely killing my fingers. They've been really badly sore the last few days due to the cold anyway (I have arthritis in my left hand and wrist) and this is getting beyond painful. Besides, the couch is more comfy and all I want to do today is doze. Damned stomach's been agony the last few days and kept me up much of the night and into the morning today.

Still, nice weekend overall and Love had a good time, so that's what counts. I'll try to get some photos up tonight or tomorrow. Ta for now.

Oh man. Went to login to blogger just now and it's forcing me to switch to the new stuff. Dammit. I don't want to switch, I'm perfectly happy as-is. Bitches.

~ snow falls on :: miss m :: at 2/19/2007 02:56:00 PM ~ ~