You know what they say about the best-laid plans..

I've been spending 3 days a week doing a rotation in Seattle. Because traffic is so bad, I spend a total of 4 hours in the car. I leave around 6 AM and get back between 6 and 7 PM. Last Wednesday, Mike celebrated his 30th birthday. (That's the way he puts it. It's not the first time he's celebrated his 30th birthday, and it probably won't be the last.) I really wanted to make his day special because I've been gone so much.

I asked him what cake he wanted (lemon cheesecake), and bought all the ingredients in advance so that I could make them the night before his birthday. I had all his presents (that I had been ordering/buying for weeks) hidden in my car with tape and scissors so that I could stop at the store on the way to work, get some wrapping paper, and come home and celebrate.

Tuesday night, I started the cheesecake. I made the crust first, then realized after it had baked 15 minutes that I had set the oven too high. I got it out before it was blackened, but that was one crispy crust.

Then I started on the filling. I was blending lemon peel and sugar together when I noticed it looked like a larger amount than usual. I measured it out and it came to 1 2/3 cup. It should have been 1 1/4 cup. Not sure where that extra 5/12 of a cup came from. I dumped the extra sugar out, but that also meant I dumped out the lemon peel, so it definitely wasn't going to taste as lemony as it could.

I finished the filling, poured it on the crust, and stuck it in the oven, then realized a minute later that I hadn't added the heavy cream. Mike took it out, I stirred in the cream as best I could, then put it back in the oven...at the wrong temperature. Again!! Of course, I only figured that out when I came downstairs to get it and the consistency was all eggy rather than creamy.

The next day, I left for work at 5:40 AM so that I could have time to stop at the store and get Mike a cake that didn't have the consistency of a bouncy ball. I called Mike from the store to tell him I was getting another cake because the other one was more like a thick lemon-flavored omelet. He volunteered to try it, just to make sure it was bad. He said he liked it, but I wasn't convinced he wasn't just being nice. I grabbed three mango key lime personal-sized cakes and went to pick out wrapping paper. The store had two options: pink princess sparkley wrapping paper and "You're having a baby!" wrapping paper. Urgh. They also had white butcher paper, so guess what I ended up getting.

I left work an hour and a half early with my butcher paper and little cakes so I could avoid rush hour. It was a very warm day and I came back to a hot, hot car. And then I got stuck in traffic. There were 6 accidents on the way home, and I was on the road over two hours. By the time I arrived in DuPont, the back-up cakes I had purchased were more like soup. I walked inside, looked at Mike, and instead of greeting him with a kiss, burst into tears. Mike told me that I was not allowed to cry on his birthday, but it was too late. I felt like, despite my best efforts, I'd ruined the day. Bless his heart, Mike's always such a good sport and said he was happy just to have me there, but, seriously, look at the pictures.

See? Not pretty. It looks like a jar of strawberry jam sneezed on a giant egg yolk. And this last one of Mike. His lips may be smiling, but I swear my poor husband's eyes are silently screaming.

So we ended up with the original rubbery cheesecake, part of which Mike had already eaten because he thought it wasn't going to be his birthday cake, and butcher paper-wrapped presents. I guess we can call it a Pac Man-themed party, but it wasn't exactly a high point in my career as a wife.