Happy Birthday To Me

My birthday has, for the last few years, sucked for one reason or another.  So this year I approached it with more than a little trepidation.  I wanted to give it the best possible chance of success but given the myriad of ways it's been miserable in recent years I was aware that it's almost impossible to formulate a successful plan given that the universe is a creatively cruel and unusual place...and my birthday seems to be the cosmic focus of the cruelness and unusuality*.

So this year when Charles suggested going down to my Dad's farm for the weekend, I only had a brief moment before I realised that here was the perfect opportunity to throw off tradition and thwart the expectation.  Go down to my Dad's farm.  Assume nothing will be done on my birthday but lying on a couch and occasionally rising to haul my children out of the pond.  How on earth can that possibly go wrong?

As a birthday present (because he was forbidden from buying me anything) my Dad treated us to dinner at the local Chinese the night before my birthday - this worked well for me.  30 June isn't the date that's cursed, after all.  And it was bliss.  Great food, great atmosphere, had a blast.  Home again and off to bed.  And then things took an ugly turn.  My sleep was broken by the sound of my small, distraught son depositing everything in his stomach onto his pillow.  A quick check of the clock as I threw him into a warm bath confirmed my worst fears.  Four minutes past midnight...happy birthday to meeeeee!

And so I spent the night cuddling a sick boy, waking up every hour and trying to get him to imbibe juice laced with Panadol.  By morning I was tired, sore and not really in the mood to party.  But I was optimistic.  Panadol had downgraded James from a hot, writhing ball of cyclonic fury to merely grumpy toddler status.  We could still save this.  We headed into town for some lunch and a spot of birthday shopping.  And this is where it all turned around.

I've been looking for a winter coat for months now but apparently thin felt is this season's only option material-wise and jacket patterns are designed for people shaped like bricks.  Since I refuse to fork out mega bucks to look like a felt-covered brick I've been gadding about in jackets three sizes too big.  Target Country was about to change all that because they had a gorgeous cream parka with fur-lined hood marked down by 25%.  And then when we actually got to the counter it was marked down further and I wound up paying a paltry amount for a jacket full of win.  Things were looking up.

My little girl, almost seven and obsessed with secrets, surprises and spoiling people, has clear ideas about how birthdays should be.  Mama's was not living up to it.  So I dropped super-broad hints about wanting my own mug for Opa's house and she darted off to the local variety score to pick something appropriate for the princely sum of $2.

Next we had to address James' particular fetish and that means cake.  Unwilling to spend much on something I don't really care for we headed to Woolies and here's where inspiration took hold.  I settled on a $5 sponge cake with cream filling.  The kids looked thoroughly disappointed in my miserable choice of cake until I announced the plan - I would coat it in chocolate ganache and they could decorate it any way they liked.  The happy was palpable and they quickly armed themselves with sprinkles and icing animals.


Back at the farm, my babies got to work.  

James, sick as a dog, was in his element.  No small boy can be expected to contain his saliva around chocolate ganache and cream...so watching him work was like watching Typhoid Mary bake scones for morning tea and I was convinced we were all going to catch whatever it was he was packing, but there was no way I was going to kill the only good thing that had happened to him since we landed.

They worked for ages, applying the dedication reserved for master cake artists commissioned by the queen. The concentration levels were through the ceiling.  Never before has the application of purple sprinkles been the subject of such intense and careful attention.

Finally prepared to call time, the icing on this cake was not the icing itself but being allowed to place the candles themselves anywhere they liked.

Best birthday cake EVER.

* A small part of me wonders if this interesting anomaly is related to the fact that my birthday is 1 July - the start of the new financial year.  Perhaps the concentrated animosity of 22 million Australians suspicious of legislative financial change that is enacted come 1 July has created some sort of ripple that is messing up my many happy returns?  Also?  I am aware that unusuality is not a word.  But it bloody well should be.