Time to Celebrate!

So today was DH's birthday! I took it easy most of the day . . . Frank has been a bit temperamental since we stopped the Indocin, and I have a feeling he may have a girlfriend Fiona lurking in there, too. I suspect they are fighting today, so I've been trying to give them some quiet time to work out their issues.

I've been having difficulty finding the "right" gift for DH this year. He has been wanting this USB external, self-charging hard drive to backup his computer, and I found a good deal on one on Amazon, so I've been thinking of ordering that. I decided to ask him to make sure it was the right thing - I hate ordering things to find out I didn't get it quite right. So, when we sat down together, I told him what I wanted to get him and asked him if I had the right thing with the right specifications. He is currently on the fence with that gift - I was going to order him a 320 GB drive, and he kind of wants the 500 GB drive, but that is a bit more money than I wanted to spend right now (since my "real" present is the other gift I'm about to discuss). I'm still waiting for a decision from him on the backup drive. Perhaps I'll save that and buy it for him for another holiday!

The 2nd present is a joint gift from my parents as well. DH desperately needs a new grill. He doesn't actually realize it, but his old grill died. The grates have rotted through, there are layers of scum (and now cigarette butts from the contractors) and just flat out poisonous decay, and I firmly believe it is too dangerous to ever fire that grill up again. The problem is, he truly loves his grill, and like everything else in his world, he hates parting with anything. Part of him sincerely believes that he will be using that grill again. I'm sorry to say, he isn't going to win this battle. So, I did some investigating, and I identified what I think is the "perfect" grill for DH. But, again, I know how much his grill means to him, so I decided to let him select his next grill instead of dictating which one I thought was best for him. It turns out, he really liked the one I picked out and showed him online! There is one other one I saw, and he is trying to decide between the two. He asked me for a few days so he could go see them in person and decide which one he likes best, and if he finds something else he likes even better, then I will get that for him. There is one we saw that is really cool, but super-expensive. It looks kind of like a built-in grill - it comes complete with a stone facade workspace! I'm willing to spend the money, but DH won't let me . . . he thinks it is cool, but not worth the money. We'll see . . . perhaps I'll buy that one anyway.

So, we've been trying to figure out how to celebrate DH's birthday for weeks now. We had hoped to be all moved into the house and invite a bunch of people over for a bbq dinner in our Sukkah. Needless to say . . . we haven't moved, we have no Sukkah this year . . . and so we didn't have a party. DH was extremely disappointed - he just loves to have everyone over for his birthday dinner in the Sukkah. Once we realized the Sukkah party was out, we discussed other options. We talked about going out for a nice dinner somewhere, but DH has been crazy busy with work and running around, and hasn't really been in the mood to go out for dinner at night, and Frank has been making my life difficult, so I get nervous planning anything specific since I never know how I will feel from one minute to the next.

After much discussion, we decided that I would make DH a nice dinner at home. We didn't get the place cleaned up enough to set the broken dining room table for a romantic dinner by candlelight, but I was doing well enough to cook for him, and we sat together on the couch and ate dinner. I decided to make Chicken Marsala (well, a vegetarian version of Chicken Marsala with veggie Chicken), rice pilaf, and broccoli. For dessert, we had chocolate lava cakes and a side of ice cream. I didn't have the energy to cook up a full cake yet (I've been fighting a cold all day, thanks to a good friend of ours who was at the Sukkah party last night). I'm hoping to bake that for him for Wednesday night when we go out to dinner with my parents to celebrate his birthday.

Unfortunately, just as DH got home and we were preparing to have his birthday dinner, our contractor called. He was extremely pissed off, and we ended up fighting with him on the phone for 45 minutes. Long story short, he works with my cousin, and I finally contacted my cousin about all the problems we've been having. He must have ripped our contractor a new one, because he was PISSED. He tried to tell us that all of the problems with the house were our fault, not his. It was a HORRIBLE conversation . . . and I certainly did not need to get that worked up or upset. Frank was quite unhappy for the rest of the evening, but at least DH & I got to have a nice dinner together. Too bad our contractor ruined his birthday :(.