29 sunflowers
Sunflowers have special meaning for us because Sunflower is one of Joe's pet names for me. (I'll spare you the reason why. I know you're already gagging. I'm sorry.)
This was especially sweet because ordering flowers for delivery I'm sure was no easy task for him. And actually, he couldn't remember how to ask the flower shop to include a vase, so one day last week he ended up going to a home-goods store and buying one himself and then sneakily bicycling all the way to my school so he could deliver it to my office right after I'd left work. He got my supervisor to hide it in her cabinet so I'd have a vase after the surprise flowers arrived on Friday.
Isn't he wonderful? I feel so lucky. I was so overwhelmed by it I started crying in the office. And that made my supervisor cry, too. It was all very sappy.
At the same time, I couldn't help but feel a little guilty, too, considering that my supervisor was sadly telling me recently that her birthday fell on Mother's Day this year, and her husband completely forgot both. Ouch!
And today Joe got busy in the kitchen and baked a chocolate cake. Last year he made a cake in his school's home economics room. Since then he discovered our microwave doubles as an convection oven, so this time he made the cake in our microwave and iced it with icing that flew back from America with us in my suitcase.
It was excellent.
My birthday this year conveniently coincided with the annual sayonara party to bid farewell to all the JETs leaving Japan, so we had a good time partying the night away. Definitely a memorable day.
