It was Skylar's birthday last week. It's hard to make plans for Skylar's birthday because every time I ask him what he wants to do he says stuff like "you know the only thing I like to do is be with you." It's like I married my father who, whenever we ask what he'd like for his birthday, says "for my kids to save their money!"

Skylar is very lucky because I'm a super easy man. And yes, I do mean it that way. But I also mean it in terms of birthday planning because whenever he asks me what I want to do for my birthday I give him extremely detailed answers like "I want everyone I know to come over for a party where they all stand around and admire me for a full evening." Or "I want to go somewhere with everyone I know where they all stand around and admire me for a full evening."

The location doesn't matter. The important part is the general admiration and undivided attention from every single person I know.

Easy.

Skylar's response to "what do you want to do for your birthday" is usually filled with more "do nots" than ideas, so I'm left with a range of options that sound more like chores than celebrations.

"NO PARTY," is a directive I have received annually since Year of Our Lord Cher Two Thousand and Sixteen.

I'm certain if I threw him a surprise party he would divorce me on the spot and marry someone extremely annoying later that day just to spite me. And that would not be a good situation for me both because I don't know how to program a single goddamn electronic device in our entire smart-home-against-my-will. But also, I'm positive I've said something on this very stupid website that he could show one judge to get full custody of West and Duncan and visitation rights with Louie.

So, I can't do a surprise party. That's out of the question.

I thought maybe this year I could take him on a little surprise weekend trip but Skylar is apparently now a mind reader because literally the moment I had this idea he screamed from two rooms away, "AND NO SURPRISE WEEKEND TRIPS. IT'S TOO COMPLICATED WITH THE BABY."

I need to be clear here that Skylar is not being a birthday-zilla about this. Trust me. I've gone camping with this prim and proper homosexual. The camping trip was supposed to last 72 hours. It instead lasted 12. And within that 12 hours he got into a passive-aggressive fight with a stranger over light pollution and property rights and then vomited all over a mountainside from binge drinking hot tea because "why is it so cold up here!"

There is a zilla within this man. This is not it.

Skylar has repeatedly told me to please not worry about his birthday. He's sincere about this. He will be perfectly happy with a nice dinner between the two of us and a quiet night in. He doesn't want me to inconvenience myself by planning anything more elaborate than that.

He's trying to be easy, like me. (No, not in that way.)

And I know he'd be content with something like that. But I want to see him more than content because I swear before God and her internet with my hand on my heart held in the scout's honor position and with my pinky interlocked with yours after we spilled our blood on Plymouth Rock that there is nothing more wonderful in this world than surprising Skylar with something that makes him supremely happy.

Truly. If we ever send out another Voyager Golden Record, I suggest we include a video on it of Skylar being delighted by something. If we did that the aliens would want to mate with us instead of kill us, which I once again would like to state for the record I don't think that would be as gross as you all think it would be.

Finally, it occurred to me on Monday to simply ask myself, "what are the things Skylar loves most in the world?" And the moment that question came to me I pictured him and his umbilical cord that somehow stretches all the way from his stomach in Salt Lake City to his mother in Vancouver Washington.

I texted my mother-in-law "what if I flew you in as a surprise for Skylar this weekend" and I swear on my future hot half alien offspring with excellent hair, my mother-in-law responded twenty seconds later "just requested work off."

Now, I knew the hardest part of this was going to be keeping it a secret. I am really bad at keeping secrets generally, which is why I've now spent nearly two decades openly writing to you on this stupid website the most embarrassing things about myself and everyone I know. I could have just lived a life of quiet anonymity instead of become an A-List Mega Celebrity, but I chose this route for I am not a man who knows how to shut up.

I especially can't keep a secret from Skylar. There have been times when I have shared things with him things against his will where he has responded "you could have just never told me that." I am so bad at keeping secrets from him that my husband openly wishes I would lie to him more. If he caught me in a long-term affair I'm pretty sure he would be so occupied with being proud of me and my discipline that he would forget to be shattered over it.

Yes, a clandestine affair properly executed would be good for our relationship.

When I want to keep a happy surprise a secret from Skylar I inevitably do this extremely unnecessary thing where I tell him I have a surprise but I'm not going to let him know what it is. Why do I do this? Why don't I just not allude to there being a surprise in the first place? I guess that small release of pressure makes it less likely I'll explode.

But when I do this, he starts guessing what the surprise is and I start saying things like "no, it's not that but stop guessing because I don't want to tell you" and then I spend the rest of the day wondering if I should have done one of his guesses instead of the thing I did because clearly he wanted one of those things.

Instead, this time I just did an Academy Award Winning Performance as Lying Man Who is a Liar (and it was just an honor to be nominated). I told him, "I have a small activity planned for your birthday Friday so I just need you to let me know when you'll be home from work so I can schedule it. It's nothing big, but just kind of a relaxing afternoon."

And then, I said nothing else about it for the rest of the week. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. My head should be carved into a sacred mountain in my honor for how I handled myself last week.

Finally Friday rolled around and Skylar had no reason to even suspect this was anywhere on the radar.

He got home from work early that afternoon, just as I was picking his mother up at the airport.

We pulled up to the house and I went inside to greet Skylar and start playing with the baby together. I had his mom go to the front porch and text him "I just got a notification the birthday present I sent you arrived."

When he went to check, she was standing on the the other side of the door, singing him happy birthday, which wasn't part of the plan, Kim. Interesting choice from a woman who supposedly hates a surprise musical and openly and loudly groaned in a packed movie theater last year when Timotheeeeexcx Chalampagne started singing in Wonka. But ok.

I tell you, I absolutely nailed this one. Skylar was on cloud nine for the entire weekend. He, the baby, the dogs, and his mother sat in a giant bunch on the couch like victims in a 40-car pile-up on the interstate for the entire weekend.

When we dropped her off at the airport on Sunday evening, he got out to hug her goodbye. When he climbed back into the car he was on the verge of tearing up.

He grabbed my had, squeezed it, and said "that was the best birthday of my entire life."

The aliens are probably already on their way with an entire spaceship full of intergalactic Viagra.

~It Just Gets Stranger