On the Birthday Guy

image from here

I am ashamed of myself!

I planned out this party all week. My husband has wanted to have a poker party for months. While dealing with my anxiety/panic issues I would not let him have one. So.. I thought the perfect birthday present for him would be a poker party. I quickly got on facebook, invited all of his friends (old and new) and co-workers and family members. I started buying decorations to make the dining room look kind of like a casino. I picked up cigars, new clay poker chips, tons of food etc. I wanted to do something special for him. Something to show him what a great guy he is! He is always the first person to volunteer to help someone, drop everything to go help fix someone's computer, stop what he's doing to go do home repairs etc.

Imagine my surprise when after arranging all this.. nobody showed up! Actually that's not true. Me and the kids, my mother and one high school friend who could only stay about half an hour. None of his old buddies, none of his co-workers, none of his family... I wanted to cry. I had all this food. The kids helped clean the whole house, we had decorated almost every inch of the dining room and we didn't have enough people (outside of family) to play a game of poker.

To top it off... someone told him! It wasn't even a surprise!

I felt like such a failure. Not only did the surprise not work but nobody showed up.

I was so angry and embarassed. I ended up saying some nasty things late last night. Nothing you know too awful but just venting because I couldn't understand why some of these people (some are out of work, some have no kids at home anymore) couldn't take an hour out of their day.

So, Im praying to learn from this experience and to deal with this anger and resentment towards all of these people. It is going to be very hard to see him run out the door the next time they need him to come running to help them.

Grrr...