July 12th, 2021

Cake.  Birthday cake as a matter of fact.  Specifically carrot cake and that was by request, as it should be.  More about the cake later. It's a little crazy.
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Wow! What a terrific birthday weekend!  Tim surprised me by taking Friday off, which was my official birthday.  So my special day began with breakfast out at Skillets which is an awesome way to start any day. My day was filled with wonderfulness including phone calls, cards visits, emails, texts, IM's.....pretty much any way that a person could be wished Happy Birthday, I was.  Made me feel pretty darned special!!

We spent much of the day at Selby Gardens which is a beautiful botanic garden in Sarasota.  No matter what time of year it is just the most beautiful place to be. It was a little busier than we expected for a weekday but no matter, it was still entrancing!  Here are just a few of the beautiful flowers that we saw:

There were also lovely vine covered arbors:

There were also some beautiful birds and a few other critters:

There were marvelous pathways and scenery and surprises around every corner:

My selected birthday treat was a LARGE drumstick blizzard from Dairy Queen and  you know I enjoyed the heck out of that! It was Heavenly!

So as Friday was nearing the end, I was still bugging Tim to decide on HIS special birthday treat.  So at long last he choose.  His birthday treat was going to be carrot cake.  Hurrah!  Now I could get to work.  I shooed him out of the kitchen and began creating my masterpiece~ 

Carrot cake requires a lot of chopping and shredding. And here is where the story gets stupid.  While chopping the top off of a carrot, I somehow managed to also cut my finger.   Come on, you aren't surprised are you?  We are talking me in the kitchen where sharp things live.

Carrots are round and once peeled they are also slippery.  We have brand new, very sharp knives.  It was an accident waiting to happen.  Well of course, immediately I bandaged it up, then returned to the kitchen to thoroughly clean the knife and the cutting board.  The carrot got thrown away and replaced with a fresh, new, unsullied carrot.  

But I kept bleeding through the band-aids which meant starting and stopping to replace bandages over and over.  Dang!  Finally I gave up on band-aids and just wrapped my finger with paper towels.  When it soaked through, I would replace it with another paper towel.  It was slowing me down, I tell ya, working with one hand.  But I absolutely didn't want to risk ruining the cake with any - unexpected - ingredients if you know what I mean.  It was a nasty cut.

Finally I got to a part when I simply could not figure out how to work with just one hand.  I tried and tried and just kept dropping and spilling and getting more and more frustrated.  Eventually, even though I really didn't want to, I gave up and had to ask Tim for help.  He immediately came in and did everything I needed him to do and eventually the cake was in the oven.  By the time it came out of the oven to cool, my finger had calmed down sufficiently that Tim was able to staunch the flood with the application of not one, not two, but three doggone band-aids and I was able to finish it up myself.  

Do you get the implication of this stupid story?  Tim had to help make his own birthday cake!  That's crazy AND completely against the birthday rules!  I was complicit in Tim breaking the actual Birthday rules that I Wrote!  Dang! I am so ashamed.  Somewhere along the line I absolutely need to make that up to him.

But life goes on and so did the birthday weekend.  Saturday was yet more visits and phone calls and emails and so forth.  In short, we were very very well celebrated!  :)

And then on Sunday, which was Tim's actual birthday, I made French toast to start his day off exactly as he likes.  And then we headed out on a pretty drive which ultimately ended up being seeing a lot of model homes, just coz that's something we enjoy doing.    Actually we thought about going to the movies.  We haven't been in a movie theatre in  a few years, I mean, pre-pandemic!  So that would have been a great surprise treat, except that there wasn't anything playing that sounded like something we wanted to see soooo......nope.

But we did have dinner out at Tim's restaurant of choice, Miller's Ale House and then came back home for dessert.  The infamous carrot cake which was totally worth the aggravation and chopped finger.

So there you have it.  Tim is continuing his birthday today by taking the day off, which sounds like an excellent plan to me!  Another wildly successful, mostly birthday rule compliant truly awesome birthday weekend!

Taadaa!