Surprise Brithday for the Wife

This month the wife turned 40.

I decided to throw a surprise party for her. Actually, I have been planning it for over a year and was going to do it last year.

The wife is very suspicious. Any change in routine sets off her spider sense. Once that is going, she starts paying attention to other things and builds up to figuring what you are up to. As an example, if she is on the couch watching TV I might ask her if she wants something to drink. Her reply will most often be, "Yes, but you are not getting any tonight." I, of course, reply with righteous indignation. However, she would be correct as to my motives.

Suffice it to say, for a variety of reasons, she is very attuned to any changes in behaviour or activity. You can see that presented real challenges to pulling off a surprise party.

I thought about doing the surprise for her 39th, but that seemed sort of lame. So I started the planning last year. The party itself was very easy, BBQ in the backyard and invite all her friends. The hard part was keeping it secret.

To pull off the surprise I used a combination of secrecy and misdirection.

The first part was to say nothing to K. I forbid those who were helping me from saying the P word (party) in her presence. We had a family only party before the surprise party, and K gave away some of that. The wife even asked K some questions, trying to get information out of her. Luckily, K did not know anything and 4 year-olds have a problem with linear time. The wife told me later that when she hit up K for info, she said something about a party, but started giving her info about the family party, as if it was still to happen.

To help keep the surprise, all communication was done by email. I forbid anyone from calling me on the phone. Our phone saves all received calls, so I started deleting those on a regular basis, a few months prior, to build up a pattern. During the day as I surf the web, I usually keep my browser open and she often uses my login to surf when she comes home. I was sure I would forget and she would see my hotmail open with "Re: Surprise 40th birthday party" on an email header. I had to password protect my login. I thought this might be enough to set her on the trail, but I had a few things going for me. I had kept a password on my login before, and, just before I was going to put up the password, K got onto the laptop and closed all my tabs on a bunch of stuff I was reading. I made a big deal about this and then put on the password.

The misdirection was the most important part of the plan. She put on a surprise for my 40th, so no matter what, she was going to expect me to do the same. My plan was twofold. Have a family, low key party and rely on my reputation as a lazy, insensitive husband.

Her actual birthday was a week before the surprise. She had asked me to go to a dance with her the night before. She is always appreciative when I attend these functions, so that, plus a spa day I gave her (the thing to get her out of the house on the day) should be enough as a present. I got a friend of hers to go with her (to keep her under control), but even that raised suspicion. I had to coordinate with her to ensure we had our story straight, as the wife was sure to ask her. The story was I happened to bump into this friend and had mentioned to her that I had got the wife a spa day. The friend had then said that she had been wanting to go to a spa and would go with her. Again, as luck would have it, I actually bumped into her friend before this was to happen (although the story was already coordinated by email). One cannot just mention this to the wife. If you just start to tell her stuff, she will get suspicious as to why you are giving out this information. Luckily, I had K with me. One of my routines is to have K tell mommy what we did today. This was a great opportunity to get the information out that we had seen this friend and set up the plausible reason as to why she was going with the wife.

A funny bit to this saga, the friend who was to take her to the spa invited her for one of these Tupperware type parties (but it is not Tupperware, its something else that I cannot remember). The wife thought that this might be the surprise. She must have been so disappointed going into the party.

In conclusion, the surprise was a success. I think the wife is a bit upset that she was not able to figure it out. She prides herself on detecting these things. When I asked her if she was surprised, she played it down a bit, but I know I got her. She just doesn't want to admit it.

Future surprise notes: One may not wish to use a spa day where they get a deep tissue massage, to keep the surprisee away from the party. They tend to look tired and underwhelmed. Not the best way to act when you have 20+ people at your house.