Why, thank you, Jessica! Thank you very much! It turned out very well. Chris and I haven't celebrated birthdays or other holidays in several years, but sometimes it's fun to acknowledge the day in some tiny way.

Well, my birthday (Saturday) was food bank day, our favorite day of the week, and I was too sleepy to wake up on time so Chris went without me. When he came home, he put all the groceries away without showing me.

The day went by without anything unusual happening, and then, WAY late at night, after dinner, I said to Chris, "You know, I didn't really think before that I needed a birthday cake, but I suddenly find myself craving something sweet." He said, "Let me go see what we have," but in the same voice he uses when he ends up coming back saying, "I could make you cinnamon toast, or toast with apricot jelly--but I know you don't like apricot jelly--and we have that yogurt they gave us that expired yesterday, but it MIGHT still be good . . ."

Well, he was gone for a while, and then I heard this hissing sound. I said, "Are you spraying whipped cream on something?" He laughed and said no. A while longer went by, and suddenly he comes around the corner holding a small plate with a good-sized square of white cake with white frosting--and a candle in the top. (Not a real birthday candle--we didn't have any of those--but this big, chunky candle that looked very cute in the center of the cake.) It turned out the hissing had been because we didn't have matches so he'd lit it with a blow torch.

He sang me the first two lines of happy birthday, then said, "You get the idea," and placed the cake on my computer table in front of me. It brought tears to my eyes--all day he'd kept that surprise a secret, waiting until the moment I broke down and asked. It was a perfect birthday surprise.