Birthday Bust

(This is my version of what Jason's birthday was like this year - he also did a write up, so check out his blog)

I’m not great at planning fun things for Jason. But this birthday, his 33rd, we had something great planned. He had casually mentioned that our favorite musician, Pierce Pettis, was playing at a festival on Orcas Island. So I was like, of course we have to go, so I started planning and making it happen. We were going to leave around 4:30 and head up to the ferry terminal in Anacortes, which we guessed would take an hour. The ferry left at 5:30 and then 6:50, so we figured that would leave us time to catch one or the other. The ride to Orcas on the ferry was one hour and then a 30-ish minute drive to the site of the festival on the island. Pierce Pettis (seriously, look him up, he is amazing) was going to start playing at 9:00 and after an hour or two of musical bliss to our ears, we planned to camp on the festival grounds and then return on an early morning ferry. How romantic and fun, right?

Well. Have you ever seen those signs people put up on their car windows that say “Florida or bust!” Well, not just Florida - you get the picture. Well, obviously those people always get to the destination. You never assume that the “bust” part of the sign is a possibility. Well for us it was “Pierce or bust!” and, well, it was a bust.

So the deal is that it took two hours to get to the ferry terminal, not one, and add in the traffic and our stop for a quick bite at Qdoba, and you can see how this turned into a “bust” nightmare. We went flying up to the ferry terminal line, thrilled to see that the ferry had not yet arrived because we had gotten there at like 6:48. We waited for four cars in front of us to pay and with high hopes pulled up and declared ourselves with cash to be passengers on the 6:50.

“It’s full. Would you like to wait for the 9:00?”

It didn’t sink in the first time as we made our u-turn with cash still in hand. So we drove back through a second time to kind of beg and I guess just double check we hadn’t made that disaster up in our minds. Yep, same news twice. So…I guess there’s no Pierce, no camping, and really no birthday. No way.

I actually cannot think of a birthday bust like this in either of our lives. I felt so bad for Jason. And we were both just literally stunned and depressed. I mean, if the plans had been to go to a certain restaurant and it was randomly closed and we had to go to another one, I would not be writing this blog – promise. It’s just that out of thirty three goes at it, this was literally the best birthday plans he had ever had, ever. So…all the more reason to be completely, sickeningly depressed.

So needless to say the first five minutes driving away were totally sucky. I was doing my complete nurturer thing, trying to come up with a brilliant plan “b”. Like maybe hang out in the cool town where the terminal was – Anacortes, because it’s kind of cute and I thought we could find a place to get dessert on the marina – or something. But nothing sounded brilliant to Jason. He just wanted to drive home. After about ten minutes of depression he was able to let me joke around with him about what else we could do (though he was still set on driving the two hours back). My two best ideas were:

Midnight raspberry picking at midnight with flashlights
Hit a casino

Later on I told him I was joking about one of them. He thought I was joking about the raspberries, which made me laugh really hard b/c I was actually completely not serious about the casino. J

Thankfully, unbelievably, our rotten moods took us into a long, hilarious, ridiculous rant on our most disappointing moments in all of life…which ended up being a lot of fun especially because I took it all the way back to high school. We must have taken a hundred dives off the deep end, topping each dive with more sadness and disappointment and…laughter. At one point Jason was like, maybe you are going overboard and I quickly was like, Hey – Let me be depressed!! I GET to be depressed with you right now!!! ;). I was having fun with it and actually it ended up turning our day around…by about three degrees.

I love you baby. Let’s have a do over.