You Say It's Your Birthday

A few weeks ago Jo's hubby asked me to help him plan a surprise birthday party for her. We put our heads together and came up with a guest list, he booked a huge Hummer limo so anyone that wanted to drink could, and didn't have to drive (can you tell he owns a bar?) and I picked the activities. 

I had everyone meet at D's house so we could hop in the limo and pick up Jo together. I also had to meet Jo's very generous husband Adam there cause he wanted to give me an envelope full of hundreds to cover our expenses for the night. Yeah, he rules. 

I also went to San Antonio (Johanna's hometown) the week before and bought a carton of cascarones. Cascarones are confetti filled eggs you smash on someone's head at a birthday party. I knew Jo would take an hour to perfectly straighten her hair just for us to smother her in confetti. So I really needed her to enjoy the night so she wouldn't murder me over the cascarones. 

She looked really surprised at the sight of all of us, and the limo (she thought it was just she and I going out for the extremely rare kid free dinner) and then she looked really mad about the confetti when a moment later we all hit her with them. Ha! But she quickly went back into her state of shock and climbed into the limo.

First we headed to dinner. I wanted to go to Gloria's on Greenville cause the birthday girl loves it but we ended up leaving at least 45 minutes later than we had planned. I got lost on the way to the meeting spot. Twice. In traffic. On a Friday night. Surprised? I wasn't. Story of my life. 

So since the bar we were going to after dinner is in Fort Worth Rene suggested a restaurant called Tillman's. She said she knew for sure they had a dish called the Tree Hugger (Johanna is a vegetarian) so we told the limo driver to head that way. And oh my word. It was soooo yummy! Def some place I'm anxious to visit again. My tummy hurt a little bit after dinner because it's no longer used to fattening food. I had skillet meat loaf, which was half pulled pork. Yum, but fatty. It had fried green onions on top and macaroni n cheese with bacon. Yeah, taste buds were in heaven, my tummy, not so much. So I showed it who is in charge with tableside smores. So good.

After dinner we headed over to Capital Bar's roof top patio called The Backyard. Which reminds me of a funny story. When I was at Stephen F Austin a band from Fort Worth that I liked, Alligator Dave, was supposed to be playing somewhere off campus. I used to see them at The Aardvark in high school. So I asked around and found out they were playing at a bar called The Back Porch. Apparently it was a smaller bar attached to the back of a larger bar that faced the street. I wasn't familiar with it cause we always went to Sports Shack.

So to find out where it was I stopped by the computer lab in the library after doing some research and googled the bar. Only instead of typing in 'The Back Porch' I typed in 'the backdoor' and up popped a man's bare ass! Then it started flashing all these hairless men in royal blue man panties shaking their hineys in a line with their arms around each other's waists! Then all these pop ups started. I couldn't make the pop ups stop in this filled to the brim computer lab so I just grabbed my bag and ran. Ugh. Humiliation.

A few weeks later I saw the Toadies in the larger bar in front of the bar I was looking for and discovered my mistake and why that website popped up when I typed in 'the backdoor' instead of 'The Back Porch.' Oops.

Anyway- I picked Capital Bar's roof top patio cause, duh, roof tops rule. And because there was an awesome 80's tribute band playing that night that I thought Jo would love. And I don't mean obnoxious old women singing Walk Like an Egyptian or We Got The Beat in neon leg warmers, cause that would make me throw a chair off the roof. But an 80's hair band! Yes! Sing in your head 'Panama', some Guns n Roses tunes, everybody's fav, The Outfield's 'Lose Your Love' and mine and Barker's fav song by Rick Springfield 'Jessie's Girl.' (If you know the story of how we were introduced then you'll understand our fondness for the song.) Oh my gosh it was so fun! 

Jo and Nicole danced up a sweat. D was quite the photographer. And Brooklyn, Rene and I laughed till our faces hurt. Ashley even showed up later since she lives not far from there. She didn't arrive until after 1am and the line was down the block to get it. So Johanna made me con a doorman to get her in the back door. Not my finest hour. I was so afraid he was going to give me the lecture the bouncer gives in the movie 'Knocked Up' where he says "You can't come in. You old. She's pregnant. I can't be lettin' a bunch of old, pregnant bitches run around." I felt if Johanna said 'It's my birthday and one of the members of our party is late. Can she come in this way?" he might let her in. Because Johanna always gets what she wants. But she disagreed with my plan of attack and instead pushed me at him and said, "You're brown and skinny. Go get her." So you can imagine my relief when I didn't get the "You old" speech and he let us go get Ashley out of the never-ending line.

The limo got us home safely (I crawled in bed at 3am) and I was still laughing 3 hours later when Hudson woke up for the day. It was the most fun I'd had in a long time. Man I wish Johanna had birthdays more often.