Remember those number puzzles where the goal is to get all the numbered tiles - 15, of them, I think, in order by sliding them around one by one? I always enjoyed those when they showed up in birthday party goodie bags or in Halloween swag, they appealed to my OCD/Type A side (if I may grossly generalize for a moment), my enthusiasm for imposing order over chaos and the rush I feel in putting something all messed up to rights.

Lately I've come to realize that the things that make a childhood game fun and compelling are much less so when applied to real life.

In other words, we continue to make progress on The Things, inch by inch and tile by tile. Moving one issue closer to resolution requires making a mess of three or four (or more!) other issues, which then require their own triage to figure out what needs to be done with them which hopefully won't undo the progress we made on the first thing. Most frustrating.

One of the more regrettable side effects of all this is that I've put the canning kettle away for a bit. I've always taken the position that canning doesn't require all the huge blocks of time that people remember their great-aunt Sally taking to put up some tomatoes and I stand by that stance, so to speak. Aunt Sally was likely trying to put up enough to get her through the winter, with no Wegmans or other nifty market to fill-in for any shortfall she failed to consider. For most of us, canning and preserving is frugal on the one hand (I can put up four pints of bourbon marinated mushrooms for two-thirds the cost of buying them!) and fun on the other - but not quite as necessary for most as in by-gone years. So, theoretically and according to my own long-professed beliefs, I should be able to zip up six pints of cranberry chutney in an odd hour in between work on The Things.

And yet. We've had to think long and hard about what is dispensible for the time being, what can be set aside and packed up to make room for The Things and other activities. I confess that there's a part of me that is reliving childhood fingers-crossed/say the opposite wishcraft that says just writing about putting my kettle away will result in some kind of magically appearing hours here and there where I have nothing else to do and chutney, jam or pickle ingredients suddenly appear. Hope, as they say, springs eternal.

I fear that I've been neglecting you, my internet friends. The thing is this: there's this thing that may or may not happen and then there's this other thing, which is definitely going to happen but how and when it happens will depend upon whether or not the first thing happens. There are other things, too, of course, but they're not nearly so interesting or compelling. And, no, I can't share the first two things yet. As Brad Pitt's character said in a very fun movie, "Look, it's not in my nature to be mysterious, but I can't talk about it and I can't talk about why" except he was talking about Julia Roberts (sort of) and I'm talking about the things.

In compensation, I will instead talk about the Boy Wonder's fifth birthday party - actually, his fifth birthday altogether, which for some reason we've been celebrating for a week. The first celebratory installment came last week at his friend J.'s house. J. couldn't make it to the party, but his mom suggested we come over for a playdate instead. Somehow the playdate evolved into a private party including cupcakes, streamers, candles, singing and cake. It was very sweet and the Boy was thrilled to have special time with J. And then came the official party attended by five boys, each of whom apparently consumed several liters of rocket fuel prior to arrival.

In case it's not evident, the party theme was "knights and castles".



This is the cake. Damn something must be wrong with my camera (no way I'm admitting to poor skills, not at this juncture). Anyway, it's a castle, on a field complete with moat and matzoh drawbridge. Brainiac made the flags and bridge - I think he was happy to have a creative job to do rather than the usual pre-party, "Honey, can you take out the trash?" stuff I generally ask him to do. This cake was kind of unique because I didn't use every color in my arsenal of pastes, although that really was an awful lot of green, eh? And I"m not so happy with the highlighting on the castle itself. For some reason I used a glaze and not a buttercream, but that's water under the drawbridge now and every kid at the party ooohed and ahhhed appropriately. And isn't that really the goal?



I made a couple dozen shield cookies, as well. I used the same cookie recipe as that for the egg hunt cookies from earlier this year, which I was so satisfied with then and haven't managed to improve upon. They haven't let me down yet, so why muck around with it, you know? Every shield was unique to my great pride - imagine the disconcertion when every.single.child wanted to know why I had not managed to ice fleur-de-lis or rampant lions. Buggers.

Still, a good time had by all. The adults consumed much wine, beer and spirits. I have two rules for successful birthday parties - first, serve real food (in this case barbecue and pesto salad) and have lots of alcohol on hand for the adults. The booze serves multiple purposes: it keeps the adults from - horrors! - dropping the kids off and leaving, and although the parents are present the actual parenting is somewhat relaxed and the kids end up having a really great time. We had an outbreak of King of the Hill that harkened back to the days pre-helicopter parents and a rousing game of croquet that I'm pretty sure did not adhere to any, you know, official rules. In short, a lovely evening.

Then finally because of Brainiac's travel schedule and dealings with the aforementioned things we enjoyed the Birthday Dinner just last night, although the anniversary in question actually happened on Tuesday. When asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner, I - who had visions of easy grilling or take-out pizza - was somewhat shocked to hear the Boy Wonder express a fondness for broiled salmon, couscous, braised carrots with olives, and wilted lettuce salad. And so it happens that more than a week after the first "happy birthday to you" was sung I still am cleaning up from celebratory events.

It has been a long week.