I love my birthday.

There’s really no other way to say it. I LOVE my birthday. Love, love, love, love it. Every year, I prepare for my favorite meal at the Melting Pot and I adore every second of it. I also get excited about the mail and the phone again as if they didn’t really exist at all during the remainder of the year. Birthday cards start to come and friends in exotic locations send me chocolates – which I promptly nom nom the heck out of.

But the Melting Pot, that is the icing on my birthday cake. There’s a way that we do things there that is familiar and yet builds the anticipation for each step. First of all, it’s always Vivian, Nathan and I. I want to say that again because it’s my favorite part: it’s always Vivian, Nathan and I.

So I always start with the Ying & Yang martini, which I found a few years ago after some other failed drink attempts. It’s utterly sweet and tastes like vanilla ice cream, which is apparently the only sort of alcoholic drinks I actually like. Doesn’t taste like alcohol? Perfect.

From there, we start with cheese. If you don’t know a darn thing about me, know that: a) I could live on cheese, b) I haven’t met a cheese that I don’t appreciate, c) I judge people by their love of cheese. On a side note, you can also apply these statements to every member of my photography crew as that criteria is foremost in my hiring decisions. Obviously.

Right, so cheese. Swiss. Nathan gets the vegetables (cauliflower, carrots and the newly added broccoli which Vivian made a blech face at) while Vivian and I hog the green apples. We’ll share one or two of the final apples but the servers seem to magically place them in front of us. (I should add that Vivian has no hater-aid for broccoli, it just didn’t jive with the swiss cheese and I didn’t want to give it a try after the face she made.)

We always devour the cheese, burning our tongues on the last bit that remains at the bottom of the pot. That’s the best part, really.

Nathan gets the mushroom salad. We always talk of the “old” mushroom salad which consisted of a plate of mushrooms literally and mourn it’s demise and replacement. The salad course is always up in the air for Vivian and I. Sometimes we will decline it all together, other times we will split a single California salad, depending on if we think we will make it through the whole meal or not. Yesterday, we felt bold and ravenous and did the salad split.

The main course is what we call the Surf & Turf, but really is a special combination that the waiter creates of lobster, portabella mushrooms and beef. Another “old” item that we remember has since left the menu, but can make a magical return when we ask for it. We cook it in the Mojo style, which we found  to be the tastest by far and we prepare for our special way of doing things …  Nathan gets all of the skewers and meat and the symphony of cooked food appears on my plate just as I’m ready for the next bite. Pure enjoyment, none of the fuss.

Vivian and I get all of the sauces since Nathan doesn’t eat any of them. We’ve found our clear favorites : teriyaki and sweet & sour for the meat, garlic butter for the lobster, green goddess for everything and anything in between.  And here’s where I tell you about green goddess. I am INFATUATED with green goddess and I can eat it by the spoonful.  My infatuation regularly leads to the waiter bringing me refills and we had found the waiter of my dreams several visits ago. His name is Adam, he brings me unending supplies of green goddess.

Knowing that my kindred spirit waiter Adam makes my unending bowl of green goddess happen, I had requested him, as I had many times in the past to be our waiter. Yesterday, the hostess seated as she normally does and places a birthday card in the middle of the table “Happy Birthday Adam, your waiter is Clay”. We looked at each other, all three of us were puzzled and yet we broke out into laughter when she was safely around the corner. She’s clearly mistaken. She clearly meant “Happy Birthday Lynn, your waiter is Adam”. Right? Right?

Poor Clay. I hope he didn’t see our disappointment when he introduced himself. Poor Clay, you were about to meet the green goddess monster in the flesh. You didn’t even see it coming.

Even before the first round of meat of was done cooking, Clay came around the corner to find me noming some green goddess and I must have a face that he understood because a full bowl of green goddess appeared moments later. I’m not talking the regular sized ramekins that it normally comes in. This was a soup sized bowl full of heaven sitting there in front of me. Had he just placed himself at the top of my happiness scale with a glow and angelic french horn music? Yes. Yes. Yes, he had.

Dessert followed and was also devoured promptly: Ying & Yang, half white and half dark chocolate. We left the cheesecake just as we normally do. It’s impossible to dip and is just trumped by the other yummier offerings anyway. Next time, I’m let them know the cheesecake stands alone.