i am a butterfly…

Posts Tagged ‘birthday’

Happy 14th birthday to Goblin.

Last Wednesday, I turned forty. I’ve been vascillating between having a hard time with that and being okay with it, and mostly I’m falling on the side of being okay with it. While my life isn’t where I thought it would be when I hit 40 – the infertility thing rears its head in everything – I’m still pretty happy with my life in general. I have an incredible husband, great friends, and a family that loves me. I have a comfortable, if messy and rented, home in a place I love to live. I don’t really want for anything material. All things considered, I’m doing pretty well.

To celebrate, I told my mother months ago that what she could get me for this birthday was plane tickets to spend the week with her and the rest of the family in Georgia. Since my birthday fell the day before Thanksgiving this year, it worked out perfectly that we would be there for the holiday, too. Those plane tickets were really all I wanted and expected, but she also planned a big birthday dinner with the whole family. Most of the immediate family lives in Georgia now, but my Aunt Melissa and her partner*, Dave, came up from Florida, too, which made it even more special.

Here we all are at the Japanese restaurant where we had dinner:

Don’t mind the weird look on my face. I was still befuddled by the funny hat and the crazy happy birthday drumming that happened right before this photo was taken.

From left to right:
back row: Alex’s girlfriend Beth, my brother Alex, Aunt Melissa, Dave, sister-in-law Michele, Scott, brother Kenny, nephew Miles
front row: my mom’s husband Denny, my mom, me, niece Marley

It’s not very often that we’re all together like this, so it was really great. Marley turned to me at one point, after having looked wide-eyed all around the table, and said, “I had no idea I had such a big family.” And not only are there a lot of us, but we’re loud. We laugh and shout and generally make a scene, but it’s a fun scene.

It was a pretty good way to spend a birthday.

* Partner may sound weird, but they’re too committed to just call him a boyfriend, so partner it is.

I can’t believe they’re 7 years old already. Those of you who’ve been reading for a while – and I think there are one or two of you left – may remember how they arrived in our life. I don’t really remember life without them, but it doesn’t seem possible that they’re now considered older cats.

This is what they looked like then:

(the night they showed up, when we were trying to figure out what to do with them)

They turned from those tiny kittens into these monsters:

Those last two aren’t recent. I really need to get more recent photos of them and Goblin.

But 7, wow. Happy birthday, Xena and Joxer.

When I asked Scott what he wanted for his birthday dinner, he immedately said pasta, with my homemade meat sauce. Almost as an afterthought, he threw in, “And something chocolate.” That made me groan inwardly a little, because, bi-weekly bread-baking notwithstanding, I actually don’t really like to bake all that much. It’s usually so fiddly, with so many steps. Fortunately, my October issue of Everyday Food arrived a day or two later and saved me.

As soon as I saw these Warm Chocolate Pudding Cakes With Caramel Sauce, I knew I had Scott’s birthday dessert. The best thing about them, to me, is that the ingredients list is so short. Another great thing is that the recipe only makes four, and since you make them in ramekins, they’re portion-controlled. No temptation to cut a bigger piece. Even so, they were fairly filling and if I make them again, I think I’ll use my smaller ramekins and try to eke out six smaller cakes.

The recipe calls for homemade caramel sauce, which I had every intention of making. At the last minute, however, I decided to just go with a bottle of store-bought caramel sauce we had in the pantry. Not as good, but less work. And I think the photo makes it pretty obvious that I went with Reddi-Whip and not homemade whipped cream.

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) cold butter, cubed, plus more, room temperature, for the ramekins
1/3 cup sugar plus more for the ramekins
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped – because I am lazy, I used Guittard semisweet chocolate chips, weighed out on my scale
2 large eggs, plus 2 large egg yolks
1/4 cup all- purposed flour (spooned and leveled)
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Pre-heat oven to 350. Butter four 6-ounce ramekins – mine were 8-ounce, which is why the cakes didn’t go over the rim of the ramekin – and lightly coat with sugar, tapping out the excess. Combine the butter and chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and nuke for about a minute,  until melted. Stir until smooth.
2. Whisk together sugar, eggs, egg yolks, flour, and salt in a large bowl. Add the chocolate mixture and whisk to combine. Divide the batter evenly between four ramekins and place the ramekins on a rimmed baking sheet. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.
3. Bake until center of cake is soft but not wet when pressed, 27-30 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes. Serve warm, topped with caramel and whipped cream.

So easy, and so yummy. One of my favorite things about these cakes is how pretty the browned sugar on the rims of the ramekins looks, so I liked them served in their ramekins. You could certainly plate them, but I think they would lose something that way.

Today is what Scott likes to call my “re-birthday.” It’s the five year anniversary of my first ovarian cancer surgery*.

Truthfully, I’m a little embarrassed by the fuss he makes over it. Yes, the surgery sucked – as did the second one a little over a year later – but surgery was all I went through. I didn’t have chemo, I didn’t have radiation; and while it’s true that it was staged at stage IIIa, I was never in any real danger of dying from it. The staging was scary, but it’s a very slow-growing cancer. I’d probably have to live to be 300 before I could die from its unchecked spread.

Compared to what other people go through, my cancer was a walk in the park. I had a private message today, on a BB I read, from a guy who is literally dying, congratulating me on my survival. He has very little time left with his family, which includes children and a practically newborn baby. What he’s going through, his survival thus far… that’s something. His grace and strength humble me.

What I went through is nothing, a minor scratch.

In one way, however, Scott is right to call this my re-birthday. Before that first surgery, we, both of us, were just existing. Everything was focused on getting pregnant, and our lives were on hold because of it. We didn’t make plans, because “well, if I’m pregnant then…” and so things just got put on hold. After that surgery, we both realized that we had to stop waiting for a baby that might never come, and start living our lives. And that’s exactly what we’ve done since then, even with the current IVF cycles.

So, yes, this is my re-birthday. Happy birthday to me.

*If you want to read the whole saga, you can start at the bottom of this page and work your way forward in time from there.