mouthporn.net
#birthday – @ahedderick on Tumblr
Avatar

Farmer/Artist/Mom

@ahedderick / ahedderick.tumblr.com

The collected nonsense of an Appalachian farmer
Avatar
reblogged
Avatar
ahedderick

Birthday countdown

The cake is in the oven. Nineteen years ago this day, at dawn, I was lying in the labor and delivery room on the top floor of the hospital on the highest hill in town while a thunderstorm tried to tear the building apart. K had just been taken to the nursery and I was enjoying the hell out of being alone inside my body.

Marzipan. Hmm.

This is fine. I am coping.

[ID: a very blue lump of marzipan held in a very blue hand.]

He's a cutie!

[ID: small blue dragon with candy eyes and a fatalistic expression. He has been through some shit. He is perched atop a round cake with chocolate icing and twenty unlit birthday candles are array in front of him like a potential plume of fire.]

From the back, it looks like he is just about to slip off the cake. I HOPE he doesn't slip off the cake. It is in the fridge, now. There are gold and silver sprinkles scattered around.

Well the Good News was that the dragon was so cute and personable that the birthday girl and everybody else loved it but

The Bad News is that the dragon was so cute and personable that no one wants to cut and consume that part of the cake.

I'm going to have to remove him so that no one feels guilty as his li'l candy eyes stare accusingly at them.

Can chickens eat marzipan. Hlep.

Avatar
reblogged
Avatar
ahedderick

Birthday countdown

The cake is in the oven. Nineteen years ago this day, at dawn, I was lying in the labor and delivery room on the top floor of the hospital on the highest hill in town while a thunderstorm tried to tear the building apart. K had just been taken to the nursery and I was enjoying the hell out of being alone inside my body.

Marzipan. Hmm.

This is fine. I am coping.

[ID: a very blue lump of marzipan held in a very blue hand.]

He's a cutie!

[ID: small blue dragon with candy eyes and a fatalistic expression. He has been through some shit. He is perched atop a round cake with chocolate icing and twenty unlit birthday candles are array in front of him like a potential plume of fire.]

From the back, it looks like he is just about to slip off the cake. I HOPE he doesn't slip off the cake. It is in the fridge, now. There are gold and silver sprinkles scattered around.

Avatar

Birthday countdown

The cake is in the oven. Nineteen years ago this day, at dawn, I was lying in the labor and delivery room on the top floor of the hospital on the highest hill in town while a thunderstorm tried to tear the building apart. K had just been taken to the nursery and I was enjoying the hell out of being alone inside my body.

Marzipan. Hmm.

Avatar

Birthday/Monday

On this, the morning of my son's 22nd birthday, he woke up and tried to post a video from his weekend urbex adventures to Instagram - only to have Insta corrupt it and fail to post. He tried to open a new loaf of bread to make some toast, but the whole bag ripped in his hand. He took out the toasted bread, then lightly burned his hand and dropped the slice between the toaster and the blender. He retrieved it, smothering swear words, and tried to close the new breadbag I had gotten him from the pantry*. The clip broke in his hand.

So, happy birthday to my son, Gromit, and Abraham Lincoln; it's gonna be a heck of a Monday. I'm VERY glad he's not planning any rock climbing today.

'* Yes, I have clean bread bags in the pantry - they are required for spring mushroom hunting and also when I bake my own bread.

Avatar

Unrestrained Summer Fun

   Last night my daughter had a combination late graduation party and early unbirthday* party. They went swimming at a larger local creek a few miles away, then came back here damp, loud, and ready to eat campfire food. We dragged hotdogs, mac&cheese, baked beans, jello, chips and sodas across the yard to a campfire area (NOT the big one my son uses for his events) and let them have at it. Honestly, I have never ‘overplanned’ their birthday parties, even when the kids were little. I just always got some food and games available and let the kids enjoy the farm spontaneously. It always worked, and cost SO much less than more elaborate, ‘scripted’ kids parties.

   I’m sure some of the neighbors could hear the noise, but the only one near enough to be actually bothered by it - well, he was the Party King and the local weed guy back in the day, so I’m not worried about him. There wasn’t any loud music last night, just exuberant yelling. Most of the food got eaten, everybody left at a reasonable hour. The dogs had a GREAT time. At some point she’ll tell me how it went, but indications are good.

 *  Years ago she made a new best friend in middle school who had a single dad. The dad was a member of a hyper-restrictive religious sect that doesn’t allow birthdays or holidays. In order for the girl to be allowed to come here, we had to have a birthday party that wasn’t . . birthday-ish. K and I talked it over, and we agreed that a fun party with cake (but no candles) and games (but no presents) would be fine. We’d have a family birthday party separately, and do the candles-n-presents then. It worked out splendidly (after The Dad grilled me extensively over the phone to make sure his daughter would be SAFE from unauthorized fun). We’ve had Unbirthday parties for her ever since. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

   It’s nice to go out in the yard and hear loud, happy noise happening down by the creek. I don’t know how many more times that will happen. We should never grow too old to be loud and silly and eat campfire food in damp bathsuits.

Avatar
reblogged
Avatar
ahedderick

Twenty

   Just had a (family only) birthday dinner for my son’s TWENTIETH and I cannot. How did this even happen. Next weekend he’ll have his friends over and they’re planning on lighting a huge bonfire by using flaming arrows. My response to his announcement was

That’s a terrible idea!

Let me know how it goes.

Feb 12, 2022

   Well, the bonfire did burn, but it was a far more involved process getting it alight than just one flaming arrow. In fact there was a certain amount of disgruntlement when the flaming arrow failed AND the next two or three attempts to light the dratted thing also failed. Some days you can soak paper in accelerant and toss a match at it and it just - goes out. Because life’s like that.

   They tried until they succeeded, though, and a merry party was had.

   Fire, snacks, birthday cake, boxing, driving-around-the-long-field-like-maniacs, wrestling, more snacks, and tall tales.

Feb 20, 2022

Avatar

   Yesterday we had a (belated) birthday celebration for my daughter’s sixteenth bd. Her request was stuffed shells, salad, and ‘beach cake’.

Beach cake is a tradition we started after seeing one at a family event. Don’t worry, the ‘sand’ is brown sugar!! I love decorating these, with blue and white icing, candy fish, colored sprinkles, trail mix to make beach pebbles, and tiny star sprinkles and pearls. It’s the kind of low-key decoration that’s fun to do and impossible to get wrong.

   Edgar the conch also attended.

Avatar

Boys will be ..

   My son was driving over to pick up his cousin for a bonfire and decided to briefly detour into a pasture to do some ‘fun driving’. A large, rumbly pickup truck pulled up and the driver rolled down his window. It turned out to be a friend from grade school - and he wanted to tear up the field a little, too. They had a good time doing stunt driving in the only flat field we have. A great way to celebrate a snowy birthday! The bonfire is set for just after dark - should be spectacular.

[ID: An orange Subaru Crosstrek sliding sideways in a snowy field, throwing up powder. There are trees in the background. There is also a deer skull mounted to the front of the car.]

Avatar

   Years ago my daughter and I went to a bridal shower that had a beach-themed cake. We were both impressed with it, once I got over being horrified because the brown-sugar ‘sand’ looked so realistic I thought it was actual sand. So now for birthdays we often have a beach cake for her, and this year it’s cupcakes. Other than the fact that they didn’t rise properly, and got crumbly around the edges*, they turned out very pretty. I don’t do a lot of decorative-type stuff with cooking; usually of I get it on the table on time and tasting good that is my only concern. Now and then, though, it’s fun to get a little fancy.

[ID: A pan full of cupcakes with blue and white swirled icing, swedish fish candies, blue and white sprinkles, little star(fish), and candy pearls.]

* And I was using a box mix - what the heck happened?

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.
mouthporn.net