Happy 50th Birthday to my wonderful hubby, Gene!
On the other hand, I can't believe I'm married to an official old man, AARP candidate, self-proclaimed "cranky old bastard". How do these things happen in life? They just sneak up on you with a baseball bat in the night. :-)
Had a great party for old bastard (hey, his words!) last night with a few old friends to help usher him along into this over the hillishness and of course I have a few stories to tell.
Let's start with Friday, the day I was prepping food for this little shindig but in the middle of the afternoon I needed to go get my allergy and asthma shots. I'd just put on a pot of water to hardboil eggs for deviled eggs and, standing in the kitchen, told Gene "Just let them boil hard for 10 minutes and then turn them off and let them be." His response was to scowl and bang his hand on the counter, yelling at me "I'm so damn tired of you starting crap and leaving me to finish it and take care of everything!" My eyebrows were somewhere in the fifth dimension, I believe. While THINKING "You. Are. A. Dead Man." I SAID quietly "Are you kidding me?" He immediately laughed and said "Yes! I am! You should see the look on your face. That was hilarious." Yeah. Hilarious. He almost didn't make it to that Big Five Oh.
But of course it was funny and I've been telling everyone.
He's been so ornery the last few days--it's been really fun and funny around our house. He also bacame his own birthday chronicler from time to time as he photographed the birthday prep. After uploading this one, I asked "Why did you take a picture of me picking egg shell pieces out of the eggs?" He said "You were doing something with your hands?"
Cute little dirty old man! :-)
I put up the fall and part of the Halloween decorations for last night and then added a few spiffy old man party things including this caution tape across the door and wound some of it around the pillars on the porch. We also made him wear a ribbon/button that said "OH NO THE BIG 5-0" and he stuck a little caution sign I'd bought for the dessert table into his shirt pocket that said "Caution: 50 year old having a senior moment" so I guess he was as decorated as the house. He also had a baseball hat that read "50: Been there, done that, can't remember it."
The Motley Bday Crue--Front Row: Dee McKeel and Birthday Boy, Middle Row: Debbie Henderson, Barb Schurke, Tammy Jahnke, and Jenn Garrison (Campbell). Back row: Jeff McKeel, John Henderson, John Schurke, Corbin Campbell, and Dave Jahnke. And not in the photo, Darrel and Leigh Hasty, friends through Corbin and Jenn.
The connections are: Jeff and Gene grew up together in Marshfield...John H. and Corbin and Gene were all in the radio game together for the last two and a half decades...Barb and John work with me but Gene loves them too... and Dave and Tammy have been neighbors and friends for over 15 years.
We ate tons, told lots of fun stories, played a little poker...
What a wonderful evening--thank you all for joining us and celebrating Geno's transition officially into old-man-hood!
And now for the recipe. Gene's favorite dessert is my Nannie's (grandmother's) old-fashioned banana pudding, the truly southern version using 'Nilla Wafers. She used to make a big bowl of it for him every year for his birthday and as a special treat whenever she thought he needed a little Nannie pick me up or whenever he did something extra special nice for her which was often. They were pretty tight. I love that they loved each other so much. The bittersweet part of that is that Nannie is no longer with us. So in memory of her and her love for Gene I get to make the banana pudding for him.
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