Today is Mr. Geeky’s birthday! We don’t usually do much for our birthdays. Mine’s in two weeks. Sometimes we decided to buy a joint gift. Sometimes we go to dinner, but most of the time, we buy each other a couple of little things and move on. My birthday has almost always fallen during spring break. Throughout college, this was the case, so no one was around to celebrate. Sometimes I was at home or off on a trip, but usually it paled in comparison to spring break itself. This year, my birthday is after spring break so people are around, but that still won’t mean much for the most part.

Mr. Geeky’s family is big into the birthday thing. I met a majority of his extended family at his father’s 50th birthday party, a huge affair that included both sides of the family, friends and even work acquaintances. It was overwhelming. And, I found out, very common for milestone birthdays. It seems overkill for celebrating the day someone was born. I don’t know.

For Mr. Geeky’s 40th, his family wanted to surprise him by flying here. So I planned a surprise party, inviting a few of our friends over, plus I planned a nice family brunch the next day. Well, Mr. Geeky was surprised alright and couldn’t really appreciate the celebration because he was working on two conference papers and an on-campus seminar presentation that were due the Monday after his birthday. He even opted out of the family brunch. I had a good time, though. I promised never to do that again.

There have been lots of other milestone birthdays on his side of the family since his father’s 50th and we’ve missed most of them since we’re many hours away now. But I haven’t missed them that much. I’d rather just sit around and relax on my birthday. And having a party is nice, but it doesn’t have to be a big surprise. I’d rather know about, so I can get excited about it and prepare for it. I always feel a little tense for the recipients at these surprise birthday parties. What if they’ve had a bad day and feel like being alone and here are 50 people yelling “Surprise!” at them? What if they’re depressed about getting older? What if they just don’t like parties? Shouldn’t the birthday person get to choose what they want to do to celebrate? And maybe that means lying around the house reading a book without being disturbed.

So tonight, we have to go to Geeky Girl’s talent show dress rehearsal. Afterwards, we’re taking Mr. Geeky to the restaurant of his choice. I’ve ordered a couple of books for him from Amazon which won’t get here until Friday probably. And I’ll probably give him this weekend as birthday weekend. He can lie around and do whatever he wants. It’s his birthday, after all.