Today is my birthday and it started off odd. I’d forgotten to turn my phone back on sound after the dance concert last night, so when I crawled out of bed at 11am, I saw I’d missed 5 calls already. After listening to 5 voice mails, turned out only 2 of them (from MOH Vicky and Busykitty Vanessa) had called to wish me a happy birthday. The other 3 called for random other reasons. I did get a text message from my friend Erin wishing me a happy birthday, though. And then my college best friend Edgar called. I never hear from him anymore and he used to make a point of paging me at midnight to be the first to wish me a happy birthday in years past, so I expected it to be one of those phone calls. Instead, he’d called to ask if it’s okay to bring his RSVP for our wedding to my parents’ house directly since he’d be late mailing it, and we caught up about his recent family vacation. He never mentioned my birthday. Weird.

Around 1:45 p.m. Mr. W’s daughter came by to meet me as we’d agreed upon and we went to the qipao dressmaker’s shop to get her measured for her dress. I’d told her that she’s part of the wedding party as singer for our wedding and that she could wear whatever she wanted, but that my bridesmaids were all wearing traditional Chinese dresses. She eagerly said she’d like to wear one, too. So we went to the shop and she flipped through the fabric sample books. She found a great deep teal colored silk with bamboo leaf embroidery, then decided on a dress design she liked. We had her try on a sample dress in that design and she looked beautiful. She customized it by asking for a shorter skirt and changed some of the trim colors, got measured, and half an hour later we were off. I’m really excited about her dress. It’s Chinese-inspired but not traditional with a deep open V-neck collar with a mesh covering over the V. She wants to wear the dress for a school dance next year. I got a great deal, too; since this is my sixth dress order from this seamstress, she gave it to me for $80 under current pricing. I think I like Daughter’s dress most out of all the dresses that I’ve ordered. I probably couldn’t pull off a cut like that myself, tho.

After the dress shop we had a quick meal at Downtown Disney. She needed to get a replacement Jack Skellington antenna ball for her dad for a belated Father’s Day present. Unlike Mr. W’s rant claimed, these suckers are not collector’s items, are not $25 each, are not out of circulation. There was a giant tub of them for $4 each. We laughed about how we ought to tell Mr. W that it was impossible to find and that we had to beg the Disney Store manager to open the vault to release this rare collectable antenna topper for us and that when he did, it cost an arm and a leg to purchase. And she did tell him that story, right before breaking the news to Mr. W that his precious antenna ball isn’t valuable to anyone else but him. He was nevertheless happy as he nervously installed this new Jack onto his car antenna, and I had a great one-on-one time with Daughter, as always.

We had reservations for a joint birthday dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Mr. W’s son turned 19 on Friday, and of course I turn 32 today. I hadn’t had fine dining like that in years, Mr. W never used to appreciate fine dining because he’d just considered it rip-off overpriced food for stupid rich people, and the kids had never even heard of this restaurant. It was a really fun dinner. Both kids participated in the dinner conversation, we laughed a lot, made fun of the rich people around us (a large table behind us caught our attention as they sang “happy birthday”, and we turned to see that they were celebrating a 2 year old’s birthday. Son and Daughter cracked up and said how sad it was that the kid probably *really* wants to have her birthday at Chuck E. Cheese but was forced to sit here and gnaw on $60 steak instead.), had a great delicious dinner where both kids ordered their steaks medium and said it was the best filet mignon they’ve ever had in their lives despite never wanting to eat “bloody meat” before. Mr. W declared the dinner a great success and said he hadn’t had such long conversations with his kids in a long time. Hope this is a predecessor of great things to come.