Birthday traditions and delayed gratification (One of these things is vastly overrated)

Every family has birthday traditions.

When I was growing up, the birthday honoree got to choose the entire dinner menu; surprisingly, we ate very few green vegetables on birthdays. In my husband's family, his mother baked his favorite cake: white cake, chocolate frosting, whole walnuts.

(I know one family where every person, adult and child alike, gets breakfast in bed on their birthday. And while I would appreciate the gesture, the thought of eating scrambled eggs immediately upon waking makes me slightly queasy.)

In our little family of me, T and the dogs, we have this:

The top is just a regular old candle. The bottom piece, though, sings "Happy Birthday" in ridiculously-high-pitched tones that most human ears cannot process. Over and over and over and over. Until someone finally turns it off.

I don't remember anymore who purchased this treasure, but it's so obnoxiously loud and silly that we can't help but haul it out year after year.

Another birthday tradition? (And, actually, Christmas and Valentine's Day and any other holiday, real or Hallmark-driven, where gifts are traditionally exchanged?)

T cannot--CANNOT--wait until the actual day to give me a present.

He gets all antsy and little-kid-excited to the point where I can SEE how he must have been as a little boy, all anxious to give someone he loves something he thinks they'll love.

Typically (particularly with Christmas presents, which are often of the movie or video game variety) he lasts until about a week before the day. Then he starts asking. "Do you want to open your present?"

Since I tend to prefer delayed gratification, I always say "No" (if only because I know this drives him NUTS; mwah ha ha).

And so the games begin. At least once a day (and sometimes multiple times per minute): "Do you want to open your present? How about now? Now? Now now now?? OPEN IT!!!!!"

This year, he made it to two days before my birthday. Since I'm pretty sure that's a new record, and since the next two days were going to be pretty busy, I gave in.

And ohhhhhh, are my tastebuds glad I did.


Friends, let me tell you something about me and ice cream.

You've heard tell of the love that dare not speak its name?

This is a love that is told not in words but by the inches of my butt, the smear of chocolate across my cheek and the almond stuck to my eyebrow.

I loves me some frozen treats.

Since the ice cream recipe in the handy-dandy accompanying booklet called not only for whole milk (which our non-child house never sees) but heavy cream and refined white sugar, a Kroger sojourn was necessary. But a quick grocery-store-grab-and-a-few-pulses-of-ye-olde-food-processer-to-chop-up-fresh-strawberries later and we were...waiting. For it to freeze.

But friends? When it did? And I took it out to taste-test it and only the outside of the container was frozen and the inside was still sort of mushy and a little runny? And I didn't care and I just dove in and ate it anyway?

Oh. My. Goodness.

Strawberries mixed with fatty milk products and huge amounts of refined sugar and then frozen are SO UNBELIEVABLY GOOD.

So good, in fact, that we finished the batch before I thought to take a picture of it to share with all of you.

Thankfully, for both humanity and my butt, the booklet also includes recipes for fro-yo and sorbet, the latter of which seems to call for not much more than water and flavoring and the occasional fruit.

(And if you think I'm not making dark chocolate sorbet with raspberries this weekend, YOU DON'T KNOW ME AT ALL and we should probably just break up now.)