So yesterday, we had a surprise birthday party for Jackie.
Wasn’t really a big planned thing — it just sort of happened last week while email was going out on another topic: ‘hey, how about I take Jackie out to a movie and you guys come over and surprise her when she gets back? There’ll be pie…’
It didn’t stay simple. Someone mentioned streamers, then I thought about getting a cake, and pretty soon it we were sending messages about Omaha Beach using an old Enigma machine.
Okay, not exactly, but it was kind of stressful. Couple that with the fact that in order to pull it off I had to confide in Justin, who is (a) twelve (b) a lousy liar (c) conditioned not to fib to Aunt Jackie, ever (d) did I mention twelve — I had to cover up possible screw-ups of Justin’s most of this last week — I can think of a half-dozen times I very nearly said “screw this” and just told her what was going on, but I held on just long enough. (And she at least pretended to be surprised.)
Afterwards, she said it was really fun to have something like that, and I’m glad — but next time I’m pretty sure there won’t be a next time :)
