Birthday and Mother’s Day Follow-up

Soliloquy had a birthday last Friday and came here to ask what I got for my birthday.

When I was little, I loved celebrating birthdays. I got to choose what I wanted for dinner (most of the time Mom’s spaghetti) and I got a chocolate pound cake. Oh yeah, and tons of presents As I’ve grown older though, birthdays don’t hold as much celebration for me. It seems everyone is busy and headed in different directions. When we do get together, it’s often not on the actual birthday. The Friday before my birthday, I got to eat Kanki (Japanese steak house) with my parents, my in-laws and of course, Duck and Doodle.

When Duck and I first started dating, I told him all I wanted for my birthday was a “Happy Birthday” on my actual birthday. I went all day without mentioning to him that it was my birthday and he finally told me at 10:30 pm that night. He’d heard my sister’s message on the answering machine telling me happy birthday. To his defense, he was thinking it was in a few days when we were to get together with family. Ever since then, he’s started like a week early — telling me happy birthday until my birthday passes. It’s kinda funny.

As far as presents go, I’m not really one to get excited about getting presents any more. If you are familiar with Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages (and if you’re not, you should be!), I scored the highest on Quality Time and Physical Affection. Get your mind out of the gutter — physical affection just means I’d rather have a hug (or lots of hugs) instead of material things. So whenever Duck asks me what I want for my birthday (or mother’s day or valentine’s day or whatever), I tend to draw a blank. I have everything materially I need and most of what I want. I’d feel kinda cheesy just saying “I’d like many more hugs please!”

Usually there is something big I want to do or to get, and if it happens to be around my birth month, then I declare it’s my birthday present and everyone’s happy This year I’m going to She Speaks and since I’m going to be in the area, I’m going shopping for clothes with Shari Braendel. Her time and my clothes are going to be my birthday present. And that’s totally awesome with me. I’ve always been more of a tom boy. Duck loves to take me shopping and pick out clothes for me, but he says he doesn’t really know what’s right for me. Shari’s going to show us both (Duck’s going too!) how to shop for me. It’s going to be so cool and one of those things that I just always felt would be way too expensive to do. Of course, I haven’t bought new clothes in a few years, so I’m sure we’ve saved money there.

Now, as far as Mother’s Day — well, I lump that in with Valentine’s Day although I don’t hate Mother’s Day as much as I do Valentine’s Day. I am of the mindset that if you cannot show me you love me and appreciate me the other 364 days of the year, don’t try to make it up with stuff on one day. I think because of my main love languages, I don’t like flowers, cards, candy, or even jewelry. I know. I’m just not your typical woman at all. But that’s me. Duck’s learned to adjust to me pretty well. He was raised a good ol’ southern boy full of manners and expectations that you buy flowers, cards and jewelry for all those special occasions. I still love his manners of opening doors for me and treating me like a queen — but I don’t want or need the other material stuff.

There you have it. I’m weird, but it works for us. I will tell you it took a few years of pleading with Duck that he didn’t have to do that stuff before he finally listened He thought I was trying to play mind games or something, but really I am as honest with him as I can be.

How was your Mother’s Day?

Edited to add: As if I didn’t say enough the first time I just wanted to say Duck went out and got me my favorite breakfast yesterday. It wasn’t anything he did specially for Mother’s Day though — he goes out and gets me breakfast every weekend. He’s just really sweet like that